


Closed Circuits

by ozonecologne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, False Memories, M/M, Memories, Psychic Bond, Riding, Sharing a Body, Temporary Amnesia, cyborg!Cas, hooker!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 23:29:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12023328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozonecologne/pseuds/ozonecologne
Summary: In a neon backlit future ruled by capitalistic terror, the best respite is to escape into the dark corners of the web – a world wider and freer than the one of flesh and bone. People are connected with electricity, cables tied to their minds and signals sent to their hearts whether they’re real or not.Dean Winchester keeps losing pieces of himself in the gutter. Good memories most times and bad memories only sometimes, he sells them off to those that need a fix to survive. Slowly forgetting who he is and why he’s doing this, someone neither man nor machine offers him a way to break the cycle.By giving away all of his memories to Castiel, who longs more than anything to be all the way human, the pair starts to unravel an age-old question: what is it that makes us who we are?





	Closed Circuits

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Dean/Cas Tropefest 2017. Heavily influenced by 12.11 "Regarding Dean." Art masterpost by my good buddy Subtextiel [here!](https://feathergrave.tumblr.com/post/165091648585/closed-circuits-this-was-my-second-time) Thank you to my wonderful beta [Dusty](http://www.dustlines.tumblr.com), who constantly inspires me. I couldn't have finished this project without you.
> 
> (Also, pst. Go translate the binary.)

Oil that has pooled in the divots of decade-old asphalt reflects back galaxies of dirty gutter water. Pieces of plastic and cigarette butts and receipts from the Hess station three blocks down dot the sidewalk like confetti. A lone trolley car rolls by a building made from rusty scrap metal, identical to each towering twin on either end, but the conductor’s face is blank – as if the whimsy of the front door, painted aqua, is completely wasted on him. A man in a lumpy raincoat huddles underneath a staircase at a three-screen terminal running through the adjacent basement window. The blue glow from the screens, reflected off his slicker, matches the color of the door.

The scarlet orange of a stoplight is loud against the understated navy of evening; it balances the buttery light flooding out from under the awning of the convenience store across the street, the brake lights of half-hearted traffic, foggy like the bleary, sleep-crusted eyes of their drivers. Ships zip by overhead, reflected in the walls of windows polished bright enough to gleam, bobbing under telephone wires and strung up laundry in their nighttime errand quests.

The cars along the side of the street shimmer black even though there are a few red ones, greens, silvers, like armored ants in formation. A man in a big leather coat pops a piece of gum beside an infrequently-used mailbox, leaning up against a streetlamp. Its paint is chipped. His hands tremble in the night air, but he doesn’t pull his gloves out of his pocket. He doesn’t cross the street, even though he’s got the red light. He just lingers on the sidewalk, staring blankly ahead.

Something that might be a tomcat howls in the dusk-darkened alley behind him. The chill in the air is palpable.

Metal creaks and groans and sings just as the birds that roost in its underbelly do. Proud steel has been hammered into railway lines, now rambling across a dirty bridge – vandalized and weather worn – like stretch marks. Cracks in the concrete bleed stale rainwater. Rust and paint cling to the pockmarked canvas, and somewhere a screw falls loose. It drops and falls and clinks against the street and rolls a few feet until it finally comes to rest. Streetlights have sprouted all around it like daisies for the fallen; bulbous ends flickering yellow warm enough for one weary traveler apiece. When the man on the corner bites his tongue, the blood in his mouth tastes like iron.

He takes his pager out of his pocket, a flimsy thing that opens only when he thinks the command. He has no new messages; there is no news to report apart from lies that have become background noise in this technological age. Dick Roman’s face is all over everything. In five seconds, something new will replace the headlines; he doesn’t bother to read them anymore. Instead, he flips through his old messages, tucked away in a private folder:

_Dean, call me when you get this?_

_Dean, it’s been months._

He thinks the pager closed. He spits his gum out and it just narrowly misses the toe of his boot.

Dean is him, he knows that much. He’s waiting for someone, he just doesn’t know who yet.

The neon lights of nightlife switch on one by one in the windows at street level with a faint flicker, ghosts of the future. Dean shivers in the light rain and turns his collar up against the cold. Fresh water pitter-patters down on the plastic of opened umbrellas, the toes of scuffed tennies, the flimsy awning over a pizza parlor, a microcenter, a Biggerson’s. It seeps between the folds of the plastic bag of groceries in a hurrying woman’s hand, rolls down to meet the ground in a longsuffering trickle. The water slicks down the crosswalk and makes a mirror in the road; Dean carefully keeps his eyes averted.

The traffic light changes and then turns red again.

Dean breathes deep and the flavor of the city clogs his lungs. A woman with stringy hair, bathed in hazy light, walks quickly in his direction with her head down and a cigarette tucked behind her ear. She doesn’t look where she’s going as she itches her face; she has obviously been here before and he recognizes her instantly. He puts his pager back into his pocket.

“Hey,” she says. Jerky, perfunctory. Her voice is unused to working, but Dean is old fashioned. She smells like smoke and nicotine.

“Hi,” he says back, soft and nonthreatening. “Something you want?”

The redhead scratches her face again and manages to dislodge the cigarette. She catches it between her fingers and sniffs. Her scalp is dark with rainwater. “I can pay you up front.”

Dean nods. “I’d appreciate that." 

She shoves a few bills at his chest and he catches them deftly with a broad, cold hand. It's enough to cover rent this month, which is all he cares about - he has a nagging feeling that he should be saving the extra for something, but he's forgotten what for and doesn't trouble himself about it long. Their fingers touch over the buttons of his shirt and the woman flinches.

He nods his head behind him, into the alley. It’s the one place where the light from the street doesn’t shine in. “This way.”

She follows with quick steps and her hands shoved deep in her pockets. Dean takes a minute to look her over: skinny, dark circles under her eyes, too young to have such spots on the backs of her hands but not much younger than himself. Her mouth is stretched into a grim line, tight and serious.

“What’s your name?” Dean asks, though he’s not sure why he bothers. 

“Anna,” she replies. 

Dean nods. It might even be her real name, judging by how quickly she answered. He should always be so lucky. He knocks on a door at the end of the alley, partially concealed behind a dumpster, and it opens for him as it always does. Dean leads Anna inside without looking back to check if she’s there.

 _Like Orpheus,_ Dean thinks to himself. _Only_ _leading a lady into hell instead of out._

The corridors in this building are cramped, lined from end to end with wires and plugs and rust. No lights. Some rats. Some people slump against the floor, eyes dry and hearts aching, but Dean carefully steps over them on his way down the hall. Anna, too, picks up her boots with a straight face and does not look below her as Dean takes her up a flight of rickety stairs, crumbling away at the joints. Through the one window in the stairwell, a yellow billboard in an alien language lights their path. Dean points out the spot of coffee spilled on the landing and Anna steps carefully around it with neither a ‘thank you’ nor an acknowledgment.

That’s fine, Dean figures. It’s not really his company she’s paying for.

Dean’s footsteps slow as he makes it to the top of the staircase. Things start to go a little fuzzy here, but this niggling intuition in his chest tells him that he’s going in the right direction. Every door looks the same but he doesn’t falter, just keeps walking until something starts to look familiar.

His feet carry him to and then halt in front of door 401, and he stands there staring at the numbers for a minute before Anna coughs.

“Well?”

Spurred on by her impatience, Dean reaches inside his jacket – into the pocket he keeps his pager in – and finds a key card. Lo and behold, the card has the numbers 4-0-1 printed on them, so he slides it into the door mechanism and pushes it open.

 _hi, dean!_ reads the green display on the oven in the kitchenette. Dean nearly smiles.

Anna pushes past him and rips the zipper down on her hoodie. “I don’t want to be out all night,” she tells him, pulling her arms out of the sleeves. She balls it up and tosses it onto the counter, covering a substantial pile of yellowed envelopes all with the same return address. “The trains stop running early.” 

Dean shrugs, fiddling with his own jacket. “I can be quick,” he promises. He shoves Anna’s money into his pocket.

Anna nods once, quick and sharp. “That would be best.”

The leather falls from his shoulders and he hangs his coat up on the back of the door. Dean’s hands linger on the soft material, despite his earlier promise to move fast. He undoes his belt buckle and slips it out from the loops on his pants, moving to open up a drawer underneath the sink. He pauses for a moment, staring into it, and then opens the one next to it instead to finally emerge with a thin cable that has a plug on either end. Anna watches as he goes through all of these steps, crossing her arms and checking the time on the kitchenette oven. The _hi, dean!_ message on the screen is long gone.

Dean nods across the small room, gesturing to the single twin bed shoved up against the window (blinds drawn). The sheets are made. “You can go ahead and lie down,” he tells Anna. “It’ll feel better that way.” 

A soft sigh leaves Anna’s lips. “Ok,” she says. When she settles in on top of Dean’s clean sheets, she turns onto her side to face him while he gets everything ready.

Dean approaches the bed slowly, soothing himself with the familiar feel of the cool belt sliding through his hands. He loops it once around his bicep and threads the tongue through the buckle, pulling tight when he makes a fist. 

“You need any help?” Anna asks.

Dean shakes his head. “I do this all the time,” he reminds her. He locks the belt in place over his arm with his teeth to pull it taut.

When his arm goes numb and his veins are easier to find, he exposes the pale underside of his wrist, where a tiny implant sits open to the air. He blows on it once, like an old Nintendo cartridge, and sticks one end of the cable in. It goes in smoothly, but it still pinches a little as he fiddles it into place. He holds the other end out for Anna.

She readjusts her position on the mattress. When she’s comfortable, Anna plugs the other end of the cable into her own wrist and closes her eyes, leaning her head back against the pillow.

Dean closes his eyes, too. He still sees Anna’s dull, pretty face behind his eyes, lit up in strips from the nightlights outside.

“What do you want?” he asks.

Anna sighs again. “Something happy. Something with sunshine.”

Sunshine, huh. Something from a long time ago then. Before he ran to a smog-covered city, before his broken heart. He wouldn’t mind losing that anyway; he came here to forget it all anyway. 

So Dean flexes his arm again and drifts.

A memory slowly starts to take shape the longer he waits: a backyard barbeque, sometime in July. It was hot out, he wore a blue polo shirt and sweat right through it. There were kids around – for a birthday party, he remembers. Squeals of delight, a bouncy castle. Chocolate cake. Watermelon in a glass bowl and a fluffy golden retriever weaving through people’s legs to snap up lost hot dogs. Lisa’s arm around his waist, pulling him in for a kiss while he stood at the grill. In the memory, he laughed and reached for her hand. Her skin was soft and smooth against his and he felt so very loved, like finding a place where he fit was not such an impossible dream.

Dean opens his eyes again, but he wavers a little and catches himself on the edge of the mattress. He gets a front row seat to Anna’s experience like this, at least.

Her eyes flutter behind her lids, eyelashes twitching as if in sleep, and ever so slowly a smile starts to spread across her face. Immediately, her cheeks have more color. The tension drains out of her shoulders and even her hair seems brighter, more bouncy. Dean sags and counts the number of blinds on the window. How many countless times has he done that very same thing?

When Anna opens her eyes, they’re a little clearer. The lines around her mouth don’t seem so stark. She hums and removes her end of the cable.

The second that he yanks the cable out of his bloodstream, any feeling of warmth that Dean might have remembered completely disappears.

“Thank you so much,” she says, dreamily. “I’ll hold onto this one for a long time. It was wonderful.”

Dean nods, a little dazed. “I’ll have to take your word for it,” he jokes. He barely remembers why Anna is even here, let alone what he’d just been thinking about.

Anna laughs once, bright and secret, and nudges by him off of the bed. She grabs her sweatshirt from the table and heads for the door, plucking the cigarette out from behind her ear. “Thanks again. I’ll be seeing you, maybe.”

Dean summons up a smile. “You can find your way out?”

“Oh yeah, I’ll be fine.” She winks at him as she closes the door behind her.

It’s just him left in the room, now. He relishes that for a second and then sets about removing the belt from his arm, wincing when his blood starts flowing back into his fingertips with a painful throb. He breathes through his nose and clenches his aching fingers into the thin blanket thrown overtop the mattress like an afterthought. He stares at a fixed point on the floor so that he doesn’t get dizzy. Reaching for memories that aren’t there anymore is like reaching across an abyss: you’ll never find the edge. Instead, you just fall in.

He thinks about other things to get his mind off the blank spot, the hole in the wall where he knows _something_ should be, but not what that something is. He fixates on the glimpse of Anna’s face that he got on the way out, the quarter of a smile and downturned eyes, but that only makes him feel worse. 

Gingerly, he lays himself flat on the mattress. He hasn’t taken his shoes off yet. He taps a single finger against his chest in a steady rhythm, _bum-bum-bum-bum_ , and listens to the sounds outside playing over it. His skin is painted in shadowy strips from the blinds, the palette of the rush. He craves a cigarette.

People come and go with frightening irregularity. Up the coffee-stained metal staircase and down the hall, outside on the sidewalk, and up above him, in speed ships and hover bikes. A fungus grows patiently over the edge of Dean’s window, just three feet from its neighbor, separated only by a thin wall. Spots of the thing, like eyelashes, caress each crack in the mortar, spreading up and up. It forms a curtain at the edge of the next three stories’ windows, and people still come and go, not caring for its patterned aesthetic, nor for the delicate love story that it’s been weaving with the AC unit two doors over. 

Darkness is always just a touch away. Memories start sneaking in that aren’t like the one Dean sold to Anna. Instead, they are sad and painful, and have the potential to engulf him if he leaves them unchecked.

Dean closes his eyes and tries to think about something else.

 

 

01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101

 

Sunshine can be as sharp as it is warm, cutting through shadows like the point of a switchblade: both a threat and a promise to that which lies before it. When it edges over the rooftops of the lowest buildings, strays crawl from their holes and greet the brightening streets like old friends, or like the sweetest of memories. The sun peeks from behind brick and cement walls, and the first rays of midmorning glint dangerously off the corners of windows. For a few hours, everything is cast in perfect silhouette. The neon lights all die out with half-hearted glimmers, one by one, as the waking world rises up again – if it had ever fallen asleep at all.

In the pale dawn of light skittering through the wispy clouds left over from yesterday’s rain, a man in a long coat walks old, familiar routes. It isn’t Dean, who is still tucked safely asleep in the shoebox that greets him by name. This is someone that has his own gaps of lost time to account for. That’s why he walks, to fill the empty spaces.

Nothing familiar appears as he travels, but thankfully everything starts to look the same after a while. He’s sure that he can’t be the only pair of footsteps to cross this particular stretch of pavement, and the idea comforts him. The packed-in buildings obscuring the skyline, stretching high and arching wide like Babel, loom like curious observers. He passes more people as he wanders further and further downtown, each of them with their hat brim pulled down low, or talking into a phone, or looking through hologram glasses, each wildly different from the next but all practicing avoidance.

The sleeves of his trench coat are long enough to hide the webs of circuitry embedded in the skin of his wrists if he buries them deep in his pockets, though his palms begin to sweat and itch after a while. When the stores around him begin to open, that’s when he ducks inside for more comfortable cover, camouflaging himself among the normals. Away from the busy streets.

Hidden in corner booths of an endless number of identical bars and restaurants, he studies them sometimes. He tilts his head, comparing the interlocking networks of twisted metal in his body to the foldout subway maps that he finds tucked behind the menus at the end of the table, and to the pulsing human veins on the other patrons in the diner. He puzzles himself into circles over how one could look anything like the other. If he softens his gaze and stares over and past his forearms, he can pretend the faint blue glow emitting from under his coat is just ichor in his blood, not a flow of streaming data: an endless sequence of 1s and 0s that sustain his heartbeat. Absentmindedly, he scratches at the healing scabs and burns that rest just beneath the fold of his collar, where raised scar tissue has spread, but he doesn’t fidget in his seat. He is perfectly composed, as always. This morning he slides into a new booth, naturally beginning the everyday routine of lying to himself. 

There are only a few cracks in the story he weaves: he can’t feel any heat coming from the cup of coffee that he holds between his hands. His thin fingers tighten around the handle with quiet clicks and whirs of gears turning, bolts incrementally tightening. His sense of taste is muted, but he drinks mug after mug of the stuff because everyone else does, even if the pursuit of satisfaction is somewhat futile. It is this incompleteness, this dreary longing for experience, that bitters the taste of his drink for him. He has nowhere worth going and too much time to waste, so he stays where he is, sighing into his coffee.

The waitress comes around again, dead-eyed but smiling, even in her dirty uniform. Her nametag reads  _Kara_. She asks if he wants a refill.

“Yes, please,” he tells her. The panels in his chest calibrate and shift, allowing his lungs to expand as he inhales.

“Coming right up, sweetheart,” Kara replies, and then she walks away. Her ponytail swings halfheartedly behind her.

He sets down his empty cup and pushes it slightly away from himself so that Kara will be able to fill it quickly as she passes. When he extends his arm, his sleeve raises up a little to reveal the small and delicate lettering etched into his arm: C A S T I E L.

Castiel flips his hand over so that his palm faces up and he meets it with a sigh, staring at the tiny spots of skin that still peek through the webbed wiring. Some are red, aggravated, shriveled. He had been quite tan before, he thinks. He knows this because there is still a faint line that separates the back of his hands from his palms. He can’t be sure that it means anything, of course. The farthest his memory goes back is to a flash of bright lights, and then a small, bug-eyed man with curly hair and wearing goggles, attempting to soothe him with nervous murmurs. _You’re lucky I was around just now. I’m going to bring you back._

But he’d woken up alone. The man that had saved his life, and in doing so had cursed him to be something alive and in-between, had gone away, leaving Castiel in a ramshackle garage far away from any sort of civilization. Castiel followed his example and wandered, alone, to wherever ‘here’ is, both scared and filled to the brim with questions about himself that he could no longer answer. 

“This is your third cup this morning,” Kara says, interrupting his thoughts. She tucks a smile into her cheek as she says it, wry and maybe a little mocking, but mostly lonely just like him.

Castiel carefully pulls his hand away, back into his lap. He clears his throat with a shrug. “I suppose I've been acquiring the taste,” he says, trying on a smile of his own.

Kara’s hand darts out and snags the edge of Castiel’s used saucer. It leaves a ring in the laminate as she lifts it away, and she wipes the spot before setting a new piece down.

“Coffee's not too bad here,” Kara tells him as she does this, like it’s the only thing she’s got to be proud of.

“You know,” Castiel says, sitting forward on his elbows. He folds his hands together to disguise them. “Before we started brewing it, we just chewed the berries. We learned it from goats.”

Kara’s smile wavers a little and her eyebrows jump. “That’s… interesting.”

She walks away with a tiny shake of the head, wringing her rag cloth in her hands, and Castiel leans back, disheartened.

He can’t remember much from whatever life he’d had before this, so he doesn’t know if his social skills have always been this poor or if they too had been stolen from him by some unforeseen tragedy. That’s why he chooses to spend his time in diners instead of bookstores: with few exceptions, chain restaurants like this look similar wherever he goes, so he can hide within the illusion of familiarity if he wishes, or he can reach out and make connections with each diner’s endless revolving cast of characters. Here, he can stably rebuild himself, one small interaction at a time and at his own pace.

Still, he doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job of it.

Carrying on a conversation with Kara is not an option anymore. She obviously thinks that he’s off his rocker, if not a bit eccentric, so he occupies himself with other thoughts. His wrist has been giving him some trouble, and he rotates it slowly as he wonders whether the problem is one he should take to a doctor or to a mechanic. He decides to try dealing with it on his own instead of making a choice, and so he decides to visit both a pharmacy and a hardware store later in the week.

Biding his borrowed time, he turns his head to the window and watches sunlight slowly filter down to the streets, never quite touching the bottom. It looks like it’s going to be a nice day. Or, at least, not a bad one.

“Sorry,” Kara tells him shortly, “but you're gonna have to order more than coffee if you want to keep the table.”

The breakfast crowd is trickling in now, packing the place with noise and energy. It makes sense that Kara would want her table free, and Castiel doesn’t take it personally. He could order the smart-heart beer-battered tempura tempters and fight her on it, like he does sometimes when he comes into places like this, but instead he just nods and sets down his cup. He’ll go quietly.

“Of course.”

As a gift, he leaves Kara all of the change in his pocket and lays it alongside his bill. It isn’t a very hygienic tip – he’d picked most of those coins right off the street – but he hopes it will serve its purpose nonetheless. 

The waitress at the next Biggerson's is named Mandy, and she is far more accommodating than Kara. She smiles at his attempts at jokes and lets him keep ordering coffee for far longer than should probably be allowed. She even brings him complimentary, fresh-baked Danishes on a plate, presumably just to keep him around longer. Once or twice, he catches her glancing him up and down, but it isn’t in the unkind way that he’s used to. Castiel begins packing up his things when she starts asking personal questions about his life – if he’s got someone waiting for him at home.

He doesn’t have either of those things, obviously. A someone, or a home. All he has to his name are the clothes on his back and the paths he carves into pavement with the worn-out soles of his shoes.

Not many sunbeams break through to the street level in a place like this, so Castiel purposefully seeks them out when he can. He steps into them to revel in a few microseconds of warmth before moving on, hoping to happen upon another one soon. He ducks his head and uses the backdrop of empty streets to paint pictures for himself in his mind. What would a home for him look like? If only he could remember if he’d had one, before.

His arm twitches, nearly of its own accord. With his head still down, the spasm of his arm darts up and strikes the nearest thing it can, clipping the corner of a brick wall with the sharp points of his fist. Castiel curls his lip as the metal shrieks, crushing the bricks below to a fine powder and cracking off pieces of mortar in chips.

A car alarm goes off to his left and he jumps, heart hammering. It only makes him angrier, makes him want to tear apart the building he’s bruised brick by brick with his bare hands. A man with a briefcase heading in Castiel’s direction stumbles the other way, his eyes wide and frightened.

Of _him._

Castiel takes a long, deep breath through his nose, trying to calm his spinning head and his battered heart, and then slowly returns his hands to his pockets. Despite the strength in them, they shake.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs to the man, but he’s not sure he can be heard over the blaring sound of the car alarm.

He tucks his head down closer to his chest and keeps on walking, quicker than before.

 

01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101

 

It may be a pointless endeavor, but Castiel spends a good portion of his time trying to get drunk. The bankcard that he finds slipped into his coat pocket reads _Chuck Shurley_ , and his logic is that the bastard who made him this way should have to pay for it somehow. Castiel tells himself the card wouldn’t have been left if ‘Chuck’ hadn’t felt the same, probably. So Castiel orders round after round of whiskey even though his liver is literally made of steel.

 _It’s not steel,_ he reminds himself. _It’s cybernetic fiber meant to replicate the structure of a real human organ._

Though if his was a true, real liver after all, he wouldn’t have anyone around to tell him one way or another anyway.

Castiel takes another drink. A loose and frayed end of wire jabs him in the hypersensitive flesh of his arm, too hot. He grits his teeth and reminds himself about the hardware store. 

Somebody sidles up next to him at the bar while he pokes at the wire. He can feel the change in the air seconds before the person even sits down.

“Hey there,” the man says. His voice is low and dark, much like the drink in Castiel’s hand.

Castiel doesn’t turn his head. “Hello,” he says. He can see broad hands resting on the bar top out of the corner of his eye, freckles dotted along the man’s knuckles.

The bar is not as crowded as it usually is this time of day. So when the man presses their shoulders together, Castiel knows that it is not out of necessity, but out of something else. “You look kind of down,” the man observes. “You want any help with that?”

Castiel finishes off his drink. “I don’t think you’d be much help to me,” he admits.

“Aw, come on. I know a nice, quiet place we can go – ”

Castiel turns his head. With the sound of a click, he knows that his eyes are now glowing blue, just like the fake veins in his arms. The light reflects back at him off the high points of the man’s face.

It’s quite a lovely face, now that Castiel is looking with his full attention. The man’s eyes are wide and bright, and when his lips part in surprise they emphasize sharp cheekbones and a short and small nose. His ears stick out a little on the sides. 

“Oh,” the man says, and any warmth drains from his expression.

Castiel tones down his eyes. They settle back into their proper place with a quiet rattle when he turns his head back to spare the man further discomfort.

But the man doesn’t get up and leave, at least not right away. He swings his legs over the bar stool and leans on his forearms, shaking his head. He scoffs. Their shoulders don’t touch anymore. 

“Man, you don’t know how good you got it,” he mumbles. He catches the bartender’s eye with two fingers raised.

Castiel frowns. “I have it good?” he asks. Something maybe like anger flares up inside him at the notion. 

Two glasses are placed before them. The man snatches the one on the left just as it hits the counter and gulps down what’s inside. He nods and wipes at his mouth.

“I’m Dean,” he says at last.

Castiel blinks. “Castiel.”

Dean nods. His mouth twitches. “Weird name.”

He doesn’t elaborate on his earlier point, but Castiel waits anyway. He hesitantly picks up his drink and swirls it a few times, then sips.

Dean takes well to this. He watches him and doesn’t try to hide it. “You guys don’t really have feelings, do you,” he says, more a statement than a question. “You’re not built to.” 

Castiel’s immediate impulse is to object. _I feel things,_ he wants to say. _I have a heart and a brain, just like you do._ But he doesn’t really know if any of that is true, so he only says, “That’s a complicated question.” 

Dean scoffs again, this time bitterly. “Yeah, right. Like I said: you’re lucky.”

 _Lucky. Everyone keeps saying that,_ Castiel puzzles. Dean finishes his drink, but he still doesn’t get up. He peeks at Castiel again.

“You know what I do for a living?” he asks, but of course Castiel already has an idea. “I sell my memories to people so they can feel ok about the world for a minute.”

Castiel nods. He drinks a little more.

“But nobody thinks about how I might feel after, you know?” Dean asks. His hands tremble, so he covers them by leaning over. He hangs his head. “It can get real dark up here,” he laughs, pointing his fingers to his temple like a gun. His fingers hover there for a minute before Dean drops his hand to the bar. He reaches for his glass. His mouth twists, ugly and bitter.

“I wish I couldn’t feel a damn thing,” he confesses. He swirls his drink and downs it.

Castiel is only aware that his fingers are tightening because he can hear glass cracking under his grip. He lets out a breath and loosens his hold so the glass won’t shatter.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks.

Dean scoffs as he swallows. “‘Cause I figure you got no one to tell.”

Castiel sharply sets down his glass and turns to face Dean on his stool. His eyes narrow. “And you think that makes me _lucky_? That I can’t feel and that I have no one?” he hisses, harsh and dangerous. Dean recoils as Castiel leans into his space, adding, “I wish that circumstances were different.”

Dean blinks at him and doesn’t appear to have anything to say to that.

Castiel breathes and collects himself, turning back to the bar and away from Dean. His chest buzzes quietly under the insulation of his coat.

“With all my heart, whatever’s left of it, I wish that.” His admission comes out soft and sad, and with none of the biting heat he’d wished to burn Dean with at the start.

A minute goes by and that’s another conversation ruined. Dean sets his glass down, now empty. He snatches Castiel’s drink out from in front of him without saying a word and finishes that too, right in front of Castiel. He nods, as if steeling himself before a risky decision.

“Ok,” Dean declares. He hops off the stool. Castiel thinks he’s finally going to be left alone and starts to turn the other way again, but instead a set of fingers curls around his bicep, tight and unforgiving. “Let’s go.”

Castiel could snap this guy’s wrist if he wanted to. He could break every bone in his hand if he thought that he posed any real danger. But he isn’t that impressed by Dean in the first place, so instead of resisting, he just gets up and goes. Dean drops his hand as soon as Castiel joins his side.

“You gonna pay for that, or what?” Dean asks, nodding back towards the bar.

With an annoyed huff of breath, Castiel turns to hand Chuck Shurley’s credit card over the bar,  and then patiently waits for his receipt. When he turns back, Dean is gone, and Castiel heads for the exit.

He finds the enigmatic man leaning against the wall outside, staring off across the river. A group of people in metal hard hats and ill-fitting armor trudges by on the sidewalk, swinging lunch boxes leftover from their day jobs and dragging their feet. None of them say a word, and Dean treats them like they’re invisible anyway. A gust of wind carries dead leaves between their feet. Overhead, blue taillights create a path that almost looks tangible, like a ribbon of candy. The street lights that dot the edge of the bridge across the city go out halfway down. A Sucrocorp billboard casts its eerie green glow down onto the pavement to pick up the slack.

“Are we going out of the city?” Castiel asks him, nodding towards the bridge Dean is staring at. The river below it rolls sluggishly on, trash floating on its surface and no doubt lurking beneath it as well. 

Dean shakes his head. “Nah. Just around the corner.” He breaks his gaze by looking down at his feet. “Come on.”

He turns without another look back at the river, but Castiel doesn’t follow. He observes the shape of Dean’s back for a long time, glancing back and forth between a bridge that goes nowhere and a man trying his damndest to get there.

Dean looks broader and bigger from a distance than Castiel knows that he is. It’s that giant coat he’s got on – it flares open when Dean sticks his hands into the pockets (a useless gesture that seems to serve no other purpose other than to make him look less approachable, as he keeps the jacket unzipped despite a chill in the air). Dean walks quickly and with his head down, minding his own business like a workhorse with blinders. Castiel tilts his head as he watches, assessing.

“Don’t got all night,” Dean calls over his shoulder.

Castiel jogs a little to keep up. He’s hovering behind Dean’s shoulder again before he knows it.

Dean double takes. “There’s a whole sidewalk I ain’t using, buddy,” he makes a point of saying. 

Castiel waits to put a few steps between them, unamused. “You know,” he says, not unkindly, “you’re awfully pushy for someone so secretive.”

Dean snorts. “You’re the one who decided to come with,” he mutters. “Besides, I’m doing you a favor.”

Castiel quirks an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Yes, asshole, really.”

Castiel sighs and sticks his hands into his pockets. “And why would you want to do me any favors? I thought I was _lucky_. I ‘don’t know how good I got it,’ isn’t that what you said?”

Dean shrugs. His head is turned towards the river again. “Yeah, well. Now I know better. And maybe I feel sorry for you.”

“I doubt that.”

Dean rolls his eyes. They’re passing under the bridge now, and Dean has to raise his voice over the sound of traffic. “I think maybe you can help me out, Castiel,” he confesses. “Best thing about it is that we can both walk away winners.”

Castiel frowns, but he doesn’t say anything. He silently (and skeptically) goes where Dean leads him, through alleys and around corners, reasoning to himself that it’s not like he has anything better to do. This is probably close to what he’d end up doing anyway. He continues to watch Dean as subtly as he can as they walk.

Out of the blue, Dean says, “I used to be like those guys.”

Castiel frowns again. “Who?”

An ironic little smile curls into the side of Dean’s mouth. “Those construction guys under the bridge. With the hard hats. You didn’t even notice them, did you?”

Castiel hesitates. No, he hadn’t really. Just background noise, human energy adding to entropic circuits. “You worked in construction?” he asked, turning his eyes down in shame.

Dean nods. “Not much money in it though. Had to move on pretty quick.”

“Did you like it?”

Dean raises a hand to a shadowy figure on the other side of the street and crosses a few yards ahead of it. “Eh, I guess.”

Castiel follows and tries to look, but he can’t make out a face under the thick hood the person is wearing. He very nearly runs into the door that Dean holds ajar for him, just on the other side of an empty dumpster.

“Take your time, why don’t you,” Dean grouses, rolling his eyes.

Castiel takes the door for himself, fake fingers curling around the metal. The two surfaces drag and groan unpleasantly when they rub together.

“I’ve never been to this part of town before.”

Dean grins, lopsided. “See? You are lucky,” he jokes. Only Castiel doesn’t think it’s a joke.

He follows Dean through a small maze inside the dark building, no lights to guide them apart from a faint electric glow that Castiel is now intimately familiar with. 

“This is where you live?” Castiel asks. He tries to meet the eyes of a young woman crouched against the wall, tapping away on a handheld. Her face is bathed in blue light; her eyes widen incrementally as the light flashes a different color, the sound coming from broken speakers tinny and garbled.

Dean tsks. His boots make heavy noises on the rickety stairs. “I’m just staying here for a while,” he says. “My friend, um.” He snaps his fingers. “Charlie. My friend Charlie hooked me up here.”

Castiel leaves the girl on the floor and heads up the stairs as well. “And where is Charlie now?” 

Dean shrugs. “On the run, I guess. She’ll be back. She breezes through sometimes, makes tune-ups around here.” 

“Checks up on you?” Castiel hazards a guess. 

Dean smiles. “Wouldn’t put it past her.” 

He leads Castiel down a long hallway and stops at a door, fishing a card key out of his pocket. Room 401.

“Home sweet home,” Dean jokes, in all but a sigh.

The room is small, but it doesn’t look particularly lived in. A single bed, up against the wall beneath the only window, which is of course covered. Light still comes in from the street. The heavy beat of music somewhere else in the building pulses through the walls like a heartbeat. The carpet has worn away where Dean has ostensibly paced time after time. The small kitchen is cramped but functional, though there is little food on the shelves or left out anywhere. One poster hangs on the wall opposite the bed – Led Zeppelin – secured by a few flimsy pieces of electrician’s tape.

Castiel’s not sure whether Dean is just tidy, or if there’s something sad about the place.

“So,” Dean says, breaking the silence. Castiel shuts the front door behind him. Dean splays his hands. “I got too many things eating away at me. And you obviously don’t have enough.”

Castiel frowns. “And? What do you propose?”

Dean licks his lips. Castiel stares at him and Dean stares back, unmoving. Then, slowly, like Castiel might startle and run, Dean reaches around Castiel for a drawer. He pulls out a cable. 

“I’ll give you all of it,” Dean says. “Every memory I’ve ever had: yours.”

Castiel’s heart drops. “Dean – ” he breathes, gripped by fear and uncertainty. 

“Just – listen,” Dean pleads, holding up his hands, the cable hanging from the spaces between his fingers. “It keeps me up at night, reliving all the things that nobody wants. And I got plenty of good things left, too. You’ll like ‘em. They’re just… a little disconnected, is all.”

Castiel shuffles. “And by that you mean...?”

Dean runs his free hand over his mouth. The motion is very distracting. “When you give enough away... I don’t know.” He moves the hand up his jaw, into his short hair, tugging a little. “It’s like I’m not all the way here, you know? I’ve got holes in my story, or whatever.” Dean shakes his head and barrels forward, “But that wouldn’t matter to you, right? You just want to be able to feel something. _Anything_. To prove to yourself that you can.”

Castiel opens his mouth to object, perhaps an insult about how could Dean know a thing like that, having only just met him, but Dean cuts him off.

“I got enough life experience to power you for the next hundred years,” he promises. He dangles up the cord, and it looks about as tantalizing as the snake in the Garden. “So take it.” 

Castiel hesitates. He thinks about it.

He can feel himself shaking his head before he decides to do so. His fingers itch, reaching out, but Castiel knows: “This isn’t a good idea.”

Dean takes a few steps forward, which puts him toe-to-toe with Castiel like he had completely forgotten his own request for personal space earlier. “Maybe not. But it’s the only one I’ve got.”

His shoulders sag. His eyes turn down. His face softens out of that hard shell of determination. “And I’m tired, man.”

Castiel looks at him, traces his eyes over the features in Dean’s face, too young. But he knows a thing or two about hating what you think you are.

“I can pay you, if that would help,” Castiel says.

Dean’s head snaps up. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “You can?” he asks, as if it had totally slipped his mind. Maybe it's not really about the money for him, but it doesn't dissuade Castiel from offering.

Castiel nods. He slips Chuck’s card out of his pocket. He holds it out between them for Dean to grab. “Take whatever you need.” 

Dean regards him, and then the card, suspiciously. Like it might snap invisible teeth out at him at any moment, like this is a trap of some kind. _So unaccustomed to generosity_ , Castiel thinks. He hesitantly reaches out and takes the card between freckled fingers. His nails, Castiel observes, are kept very neat. He licks his lips and turns away. 

Air returns to his lungs once Dean has moved. His chest creaks and the sockets of his eyes buzz and hum and click, fitting and fixing themselves back to a more normal position. 

“Get on the bed,” Dean murmurs, his back turned. His hands move to his belt. Castiel opens his mouth to object.

“Trust me,” Dean tells him, pulling the leather out from beneath belt loops. “You’ll want to be sitting down for this.”

Hesitantly, Castiel leaves Dean’s side and approaches the bed on the other end of the room. He keeps his jacket on and folds the sides up around into his lap as he sits, fingers awkwardly gripping his bony knees. He swallows.

Dean tightens the belt across his bicep. Castiel touches the cool metal of his own belt and points to Dean’s arm. “Should I, um.”

Dean shakes his head without looking at Castiel. “Not you,” he says. “Makes the memories more potent if you can squeeze ‘em down to the connection point, or something. I don’t know. Always seems to work better this way.” 

Castiel wrings his hands and nods.

Dean double takes when he turns back around, lifting his mouth in a half-smile. “Hey,” he says, softly. “Relax.” 

Castiel takes a breath and tries to get himself to do just that. 

It’s like a switch has been flipped. No more is Dean a shaken and desperate man, he is assured and almost sweet as he gives Castiel his instructions. Dean carefully nudges at his shoulder. “Lay back, come on. And scoot over. I’m comin’ in.” 

Castiel does as he’s told. He doesn’t worry about getting his dirty shoes on the covers until he realizes that Dean has already taken his off sometime between here and the door. Castiel gulps as Dean stretches out beside him, grunting and shifting.

Dean lifts his arm, the one pressed into Castiel’s side, and jerks his sleeve up. He plugs the cord into his wrist with a small sound.

“See? Not so bad. Your turn.”

Castiel hesitates again.

Dean huffs impatiently. “You already paid for it, man. Nut up.”

With a determined pout, Castiel holds out his arm. Dean blinks for a minute at the exposed wiring, the parts that aren’t skin, aren’t normal, and he hesitates. The cold buckle of the belt wrapped around Dean’s arm presses into Castiel’s shoulder.

“Uh,” he says. He jams the cord in somewhere before Castiel can get too uncomfortable.

“There,” Dean proclaims. “Give it a second to connect, alright? No sudden movements.”

“Alright,” Castiel agrees.

A strange sensation starts to work its way in around Castiel’s thoughts as they wait there together. An intrusion, like he’s being watched. He swivels his head and tries to dispel the feeling, but he ends up only catching Dean’s eyes, lying there next to him.

The man smiles at him, alluring and terrible. “Hi there.” 

Castiel smiles back despite himself. “Hello, Dean.”

Dean pats him on the arm. “You got a real funky noggin, dude. I can already tell.” Castiel isn’t sure whether he should be offended by that, but he doesn’t care. Immediately through the tenuous connection he feels something move and shift, and then Dean’s words echo in his ears a second time, surround sound.

“I think I just – ”

“Got a memory, yeah. From like, five seconds ago. The brain catches more than you think it does and this shit is instantaneous.”

Castiel stares, entranced. Dean stares right on back, which is the odd thing.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I’m gonna hang on to some of the more recent stuff,” Dean thinks to add. “Still need to remember where the casinos are around here, you know.” 

Castiel nearly cracks a smile. “Of course.”

Dean blinks at him. His chest rises and falls as they lay there, and their noses almost brush together with the movement. Castiel parts his lips and can taste the air that Dean breathes. Dean gulps. 

“You should… close your eyes,” Dean murmurs. The words come out stilted, but clear. He must say this to all of his customers. “You stare a lot,” he blurts. 

Castiel obediently closes his eyes. “I’m ready,” he says. 

Dean snorts quietly. Castiel can feel the expulsion of wet, hot air on his face. “I’ll be gentle,” Dean mocks.

The world goes silent for a while. There’s nothing but the usual sounds outside the window, the muffled music from before, the soft rhythm of Dean’s breathing and the vague awareness that someone is watching him. It’s the closest to peace that he’s come in a long time.

And then a floodgate opens. Like a film reel set on fast forward, Castiel catches glimpses of stories and places and people that he doesn’t recognize, all at once and right on top of each other. Mom, Sam, Dad, blue house, white rooms, Ben, dirt roads, hot dogs, dead dogs, Cassie, broken glass. Every neuron feels flayed open and exposed the longer the film reel plays: indescribable joy, pride, contentment, and unbearable pain. They all collide and conflict and it takes an incredible effort on Castiel’s part to keep his eyes shut all the way through it. He doesn’t dare disturb the link. He doesn’t want to miss a second, overwhelmed and overstimulated though he may be.

And then, as suddenly as it began, the film reel fades to black. Soon, the only thing that Castiel is staring at is the back of his eyelids.

He opens his eyes.

The world hasn’t changed, but he has. Castiel twists his head this way and that, expecting it to, perhaps, feel heavier. Wondering if he could hear the new memories knocking around in there, reverberating through him like ripples through a pond. The pillows crinkle and it reminds him of this time he stayed at Sonny’s place and he read comic books in the moonlight. There had been an owl outside the window –

The mattress dips when Dean sits up. Castiel follows him with his eyes, but Dean doesn’t get off of the bed immediately. He sits there, feet skimming the floorboards. Over his shoulder, Castiel can see him open and close his hands. Little half-moon marks scar his palms. 

Castiel risks looking at Dean’s face. The man’s chest is moving shallowly, but regularly. His mouth is parted. Nothing sparks behind his eyes.

“There,” Dean breathes, like the dying wind in an empty sail. “All yours.” He rips the cable out from his wrist, then he stands too measuredly, too fluidly: unlike himself.

Castiel frowns.

Dean walks over towards the kitchenette, and for one terrifying moment Castiel thinks that he’s going to just keep on walking right out the door, like Dad once did after they’d had a terrible argument. Thrown, Castiel closes his eyes and sits up too fast, shaking the memory away. Thankfully, Dean veers over to the fridge instead, then opens its door. Castiel draws comfort from the fact that in this light, the wrinkles in Dean’s forehead don’t appear so deep. His mouth is more lax now, his shoulders no longer hunching. Free of his old memories, Dean carries himself without burden. 

Dean looks around the inside of the fridge before settling on a bottle of water. He turns it in his hand to read the label, and then twists off the cap. He takes a sip, and then keeps drinking until half of the bottle is emptied. While gingerly unplugging the cable from his own wrist, Castiel watches Dean do all of this from the bed, never taking his eyes off of him. 

“Guess I won’t ever see you again,” Dean says, barely audible.

Castiel opens his mouth to assure him that he’d come around any time –

“And that’s how I want it,” Dean adds, before Castiel even has a chance to extend an offer. “Okay?”

Castiel closes his mouth. He rubs his pinky finger along a seam in the bed sheet. “Okay, Dean.”

Dean nods. He removes his belt from his arm and then throws it onto the counter. He then stares at it for a minute, as if just noticing it for the first time, a blank expression on his face. 

Castiel stands up and collects his coat. He shoves his hands in the pockets so that he can avoid having to see his hands.

“Uh,” Castiel tries to say, “thank you.” 

Dean turns, leaning on the counter. He’s frowning.

“For what?” he asks. 

Castiel’s breath leaves him. His shoulders droop and he shakes his head. “Never mind,” he tells Dean. 

Walking closer, Castiel lifts his hand and pats Dean on the shoulder: once, and then twice, maybe spurring on some blood flow. Dean’s frown deepens and he glances at the hand on his shoulder. He keeps staring at the spot, even after Castiel has sluggishly retracted his hand. But when he lifts his eyes, he seems untroubled.

“Well. Have a good life,” Dean says, putting his bottle of water back into the fridge.

Castiel nods. “Maybe I will.” 

He opens the door and takes the stairs down to the alley, maneuvering the halls as though he has done so a thousand times before.

He doesn’t look back.

 

01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101

 

Castiel walks through the next few days in a bit of a haze. Truthfully, he thinks it’s a miracle he doesn’t walk right off a cliff somewhere, given how prone to distraction he feels. Everything he sees reminds him of the enigmatic Dean.

It’s all just _there_ when he looks. He walks to the hardware store to replace the bothersome, short-circuiting wire in his arm, and while he’s there, his mind helpfully feeds him feelings associated with the most mundane of things: a fire hydrant ( _Dean crashed the Impala into one when he was fifteen and his father never let him live it down_ ), a mangy squirrel ( _Uncle Bobby took him hunting once and a squirrel was the first thing he shot; it tasted terrible, but Bobby made him eat the whole thing because you don’t waste what you kill_ ), a wilting bundle of blue hydrangeas in a florist’s window ( _his mother’s favorite flower_ ). A siren starts to blare down the street, and Castiel is wrenched back into the present. 

“Watch it,” somebody complains, as they knock into his shoulder.

Castiel nods an apology and keeps walking. Is this how it’s like, for people with lives? How can they afford to be so constantly distracted? Before, he could pass by so many objects and places and respond with merely a clinical interest. Now, however, everything seems so… personal.

Castiel takes his time pacing through the aisles at the hardware store, because each thing summons something new about Dean to his mind. A watering can in aisle six reminds him of a nearly identical one that Sammy had worn on his head one summer day, in the craggy back lot of a motel where they’d been staying at the time. Sammy had once again been pretending that he was a member of the Knights of the Round Table. There’s a touch of annoyance lingering in the memory from Dean’s end: this had been Sam’s favorite game, and they’d enacted it every chance they could get. At that point Dean, being older, didn’t concern himself with fairytales much anymore. Still, overshadowing Dean’s faint frustration is a sense of overwhelming love for family, of amusement, and contentment, and the joy of being young. Of the sense of having a childhood, even if the only toys Sam and Dean could use were watering cans left out in the sun to dry. 

Castiel smiles and nearly purchases the can, for no reason other than for the borrowed nostalgia, before he remembers that, in his reality, he has absolutely no need for such a thing.

He shakes himself free of the dream, and then goes to buy his parts instead: a small pair of pliers, a screwdriver, a roll of copper, and a few other objects for routine repairs. Though the things he piles onto the counter in front of him are usually dysphoric reminders of what he is, he still can’t shake the smile from his face as the cashier rings up his total. As he walks out of the hardware store, directionless and distracted, he tries to savor the old memory of the motel parking lot by replaying it in his mind, only slower this time.

He tries to focus on only the surrounding scents as he walks down the street. The grass had recently been cut at the time of this memory, he notes, out of the corner of Dean’s child eyes. There had been fresh grass stains on Sammy’s knees, which Dean had briefly considered pre-treating before the wash to make Sammy’s jeans last longer. Castiel puzzles over that thought before indulging himself in the memory once more: fresh onions and wet pavement. He remembers these scents without difficulty, even though he could not think of how he would go about describing such a fragrance to someone else.

Fixated as he is on the small details of this memory of Dean and his brother, Castiel does not notice at first that ever so slowly, the memory begins to lose its novelty. Like poking a bruise that has already begun to heal, there is no lingering sense of tenderness when Castiel roots around in the memory for more sensations to get lost in. Sam, as he understands, is not a character in a story that he’s never been told. Rather, he is Sammy: a younger brother, beloved and precious. Castiel knows this as intuitively as he knows his own name. In the continuing memory, the familiar freckles on the backs of Dean’s hands, lifting to push his hair out of his own eyes, disappear one by one, until eventually only Castiel’s pale skin remains. 

Castiel stops and tilts his head. It is him in the memory, now. Not Dean. Him, Castiel. He becomes absolutely certain that, were he to force himself to turn and face the windows behind him at the rear end of the motel, reflected back would be his own awkward face, not the beautiful one that had approached Castiel in a bar last night.

Castiel tightens his hands around his boxed spool of copper wire. He veers off the sidewalk and ducks into a conveniently-placed coffee shop. He’s feeling… troubled. Uncomfortable. Emotional whiplash.

Luckily for him, there’s a free table available at the back, removed from the blurring activity at the counter, where people swarm to ask questions and place orders. Castiel flexes his stiff and overheated wrist joint as he slides into his seat, dumping the contents of his box out onto the table in front of him.

While he discreetly sets to work on replacing the faulty wire, Castiel tries to call up the memory of the hotel parking lot again – carefully this time, so as not to taint it. He tries to remember how Dean had looked at the motel, and what it had looked like to him specifically. Reading Dean’s specific thoughts might serve to remind Castiel whose memory this really is.

Castiel shouldn’t feel bad about prying like this, right? Whatever he should find buried in the depths of his psyche, it belongs to him now. Dean said so. He just wants to maintain the integrity of the product.

He latches onto the motel: picturing it in his mind’s eye, and turning the model of it around with fascination and with growing familiarity. _Yes, I recognize it. How incredible that is._ Castiel preoccupies himself with his own wonder and ends up singing his fingertips as he works. He recoils in pain with a tiny hiss and keeps thinking: half about the task at hand, and half about the motel.

Within its walls, he remembers watching Western movies. He remembers boxes of stale Lucky Charms, cloying hunger, prizes in each cereal box shared by two boys who were competing for survival in the shadow of their absent father. Castiel frowns as he goes over that last one: the bittersweet pride in Dean’s heart as Sam offers him the prize in their last box of cereal. The awe and the gratitude at his brother’s generosity is tainted somewhat by an already too-familiar anxiety residing high in Dean’s chest, stealing his breath. _What are we going to eat now?_ Dean thinks. All in all, Dean remembers this motel about as fondly as any other, with the same childlike mix of wonder and disappointment.

No one knows this about him. Sam whined and complained when they eventually had to move to a different hotel, a different school, a different town, but Dean always tried to be the positive one. He turned everything into a game. John didn’t tolerate insubordination; it just made a difficult situation more difficult. So Dean never gave voice to the true feelings that Castiel unearths now, like tiny jewels buried deep down beneath asphalt.

Castiel has to set his tools down for a moment. His pocket-sized screwdriver rolls a few inches away from him, and he shoots out his good hand to stop it.

The only problem with digging into Dean’s past is that it reveals a ridiculous amount of Dean himself. In the few hours that Castiel spends alone in the coffee shop, repairing himself, he gets to know a remarkable young man. A child lives in his head. A child that takes joy in simple things and who keeps to himself for fear of criticism and punishment. The happiness of a younger brother becomes the priority, a surrogate for his own. Family is an anchor for him, adrift and struggling. He would do absolutely anything to provide.

Such a terrible melancholy overcomes Castiel then. He thinks he knows why Dean had come to the city, away from desert motels and playground games. He thinks he can understand what would drive someone to make what they could from what’s too painful to keep, if they thought that they had no other choice. He comes to know intimately how the pressures exerted on someone so young and fragile grow into depression and self-loathing as suffocating as towering city walls. He carries it around in his own heart. He just hadn’t realized that there was a name for it.

Castiel takes a breath and picks up his screwdriver again. He screws the small panel separating his hand from his forearm back into place without making any mistakes. He doesn’t think about Dean again, as difficult as that is.

 

01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101

 

Castiel isn’t entirely sure if he dreams, because he isn’t entirely sure that he sleeps. He used to keep himself awake whenever he could, just to avoid thinking about it.

But he sure _feels_ tired as he stands in line at the pharmacy. The travel sized bottle of discount painkillers that he grabbed from aisle 7 twists slowly in his hand. He only knew what kind to buy because Dean had practically lived off of them when he broke his leg a few years ago – the feeling of frustrating vulnerability is a familiar one. Castiel peels gently at the label as he waits for his turn in line.

 _This is worse than the lines at Six Flags,_ he thinks dismally to himself. He and Sam had gone too late in life: the amusement park had lost its appeal by the time they had finally made it out there together, sweltering and a bit put out.

Castiel frowns and stops twisting the bottle. He’s never been to Six Flags.

Has he?

“Next in line?” the cashier at the end calls out.

Castiel shakes his head and steps forward, nearly tripping over nothing as he shuffles up to the counter. “Hello,” he greets, handing over his bottle.

The man behind the counter smiles at him. “Hi. Do you have a membership card?”

Castiel thinks about it, gets confused by his own answers, and slowly shakes his head.

“Would you like one? You’ll get 5% off your first purchase.”

Again, Castiel shakes his head ‘no.’ Words bubble behind his teeth though, clambering to be let out: _Can I give you a phone number?_ He has the numbers listed in perfect order, right at the ready.

Castiel snatches the bottle as soon as he’s finished swiping his card. “Thank you,” he mutters, before leaving the store.

“Sir! Your receipt?” the cashier calls helplessly behind him.

Castiel doesn’t turn around. He starts to break out into a sweat as he rounds the back of the building, struggling with the childproof cap on his bottle. 

 _What the hell was that?_ he wonders, finally snapping the plastic. He punches a hole through the foil at the top and tips more pills than is generally recommended into his hand. He swallows all of them dry and then leans against the brick.

It doesn’t stop. Someone stops Castiel on the street, asking him for directions, and without having realized he can he relays a perfect set of instructions. He barely even has a chance to catch up to his mouth before the stranger is already walking away, calling out thanks as they pass. 

Castiel’s heart pounds a little faster. He doesn’t remember coming here before, and he never pays attention to street signs on his frequent walks, so how could he have known how to give somebody directions. 

And yet, the longer Castiel thinks about it, the less his panic bothers him. Of course he knows the area. He’s been here before, to have Chinese food.

(Castiel doesn’t _like_ Chinese food. The salt bothers him.)

It takes Castiel too long to realize that this is what having a past to draw from is like. Nothing is new anymore, because it doesn't have to be. Dean, well-traveled and empathetic and wonderful as he is, has done everything there is to do, and so has filled in most of the holes. Castiel absorbs his remembered mastery, little by little.

But that’s cheating, isn’t it? Castiel hasn’t done anything to earn this. He lazily drifts through space and time, simply because he doesn’t have anything better to do. Dean is the one that did all the hard work, acclimating to the world through trial and error. He has developed an incredible strength and resilience in doing so. It’s obvious when Castiel cuts through back alleys and side streets at night, defensive instincts engaged even though he has nothing to fear from anyone, being as near-invincible as he is now.

Already, Castiel is starting to have a hard time separating himself from what he knows objectively is Dean. The faces in his head have blurred and morphed. The memory of the cold leather of the steering wheel in John’s old car feels authentic even now, as Castiel stares out across the street at standstill traffic. Though Castiel had not experienced them himself, he can recall every word of a Zepp song playing on the car radio as Dean tears down his favorite country road. It’s the last few months that start to feel unreal: the only slice of life that doesn’t match the rest of what’s in Castiel’s mind. It is beginning to seem more and more true by the minute that the exchange in Dean’s room never actually happened. 

How long will it be until Castiel can’t tell himself apart from the memories? How long until Dean – as a distinct, unique individual – is lost to Castiel for good?

It isn’t fair, he thinks, that brains should work this way. Dean has given him the gift of an almost-complete existence from start to finish, empty spaces filled in. And, somewhat unexpectedly, Castiel has grown fond of the man that he’s come to know through it. The gifted memories that he replays time and time again reveal Dean to be a soft, gentle man, with a good heart and an inherent sense of belonging. And yet, if Castiel stares too long, and if he imagines too vividly, that man just becomes him. More and more of Dean disappears the more that Castiel thinks about him.

A sad and unfortunate thing is this: the more time that Castiel had spent with his thoughts, the more he had thought that he’d found a kindred spirit in Dean, and now he has to witness him disappearing forever, erased by Castiel’s own selfishness. By Castiel’s own desire to find a place to belong. He feels guilty and even lonelier than before, though he has a wealth of people in his memories to comfort him.

Castiel remembers Dean saying that they would both walk away winners from this exchange. He isn’t so sure that he was right.

 

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Dean doesn’t sit around the apartment for long. He walks slowly through his space after Castiel leaves, walking heel to toe along the most worn spots in the carpet and looking around at the cracks in the walls. He pauses on the Zeppelin poster and finds himself smiling as he examines it, though he doesn’t quite know why. He likes the art. The envelopes that he finds on the kitchen counter feel nice in his hands as he flips through them. 

It’s a cute place, he thinks. Restless energy flows through him as he peeks into the dusty corners, the mildewed bathroom, and the empty fridge. The feeling tightens his throat and sends his feet out from under him without direction. His body needs something, stimulation maybe, but the right solution eludes him. He opens and shuts the blinds three times, trying to decide if more light would make him feel better. Every time he catches a glance of the city outside, he has to pull the blinds shut again. He just can't sit still.

Maybe hunger has just gotten the best of him. His stomach growls as he agitatedly makes the bed. He pauses with a pillow in his hands, slumping over his taut fingers. He slowly sets it down and without a second thought, he heads for the door. 

The hallway stretches in front of him in two directions. One leads to a fire escape, the other leads down into shadow. He takes the fire escape and barely remembers to be relieved when no alarm sounds to mark his exit. 

Halfway down the rusting escape stairs, a hiss whizzes past Dean’s ear. “Pst! Hey!”

Dean whirls and catches himself on the railing. He bumps his hip and winces. “Yeah?”

A window with a line of duct tape across a large crack has been pushed open next to the fire escape, and a thin man with long hair leans out into the air through it. He rests his weight on his elbows and narrows his eyes at Dean. He doesn’t wear a shirt. “Where you off to?” he asks. 

Dean blinks. “Just needed some air,” he says. It’s as good an answer as any. He remembers in a brief moment of clarity that the man leaning out of the window is named Ash. 

Ash nods with pursed lips. He glances over Dean quickly before saying, “Well, make sure you can find your way back.”

“I’ll be ok,” Dean assures him. “Just need to get something to eat.”

His friend grunts. “Bring me back a packet of Snowballs.” He walks away from the window with a two-fingered salute. Dean can see the outline of his ribs when he turns. Bruises dot his sides.

Dean drops down into an alley and takes a minute to collect his bearings. The sound of a car horn, unseen in the street, is followed closely by the sound of screeching tires; Dean jumps a foot in the air and laughs at himself for his dramatic reaction. He smells the hot, wet perfume of grease and spice wafting in from down the block, and cautiously makes his way out to the sidewalk, led by his nose.

The initial anxiety that Dean had experienced in his apartment starts to fade the longer he spends out on the street. He enjoys the feeling of cool air filling through his lungs even if it isn’t clean, he savors the faint burn in his legs as he walks. It’s almost therapeutic, the repetitiveness of it. Physical sensations ground him. Slivers of the sky are just visible from the ground, and though clouds of smog clog the view a few pretty strips of navy-black still peek through. Dean finds himself smiling, and frivolously wishing that he could see the stars from here.

When he locates the source of the food smell – a deli truck parked at the mouth of another alley two blocks down – he waits patiently in line and orders a roast beef sandwich. His hunger has waned somewhat, but he’s already come all the way out here so he forks over some cash that he finds in his pocket. He eats the first half of the sandwich leaning against the side of the truck, until the cashier shoos him off and he’s forced to bundle his food back up in its wrapper. He forgets about Ash’s request for the Snowballs.

He hasn’t gone very far, so it’s easy to pick his way back to the right alley and hop back up the fire escape. He passes Ash’s window, the one with the duct tape over it, but it’s shut now and he isn’t visible through the glass. The room is dark. Dean continues on his way up and slips back into the building unnoticed. Guilt works its way into him even as he unlocks the front door to the right room and he isn’t sure why. He can’t shake this lingering feeling of wrongness, even as he sets the second half of his sandwich on the counter and toes out of his boots. He finds a pair of worn-out sweatpants in the closet and pulls them on, happily rubbing his hands along the soft fabric over his thighs.

Dean has enough of himself left to remember looking forward to a night free from the demons of his own creation. Without a past to haunt him anymore – though the specifics are lost to him now – he figures he might actually get some sleep. When his mind gropes in the night for painful memories, holding onto fearful imaginings based in unhappy fact, there should not be anything left to frighten him. As he settles into a bed that feels unfamiliar in clothes that he has trouble believing are his, he optimistically thinks that he will finally have peace. 

But to his horror, the nightmares still come. They begin with a darkness that’s ever so shaky around the edges: it whispers to a metastasizing kernel of uneasiness in his gut, a general feeling of doubt embedded so far in his head that he could almost believe that it had really come from his own mind. The uneasiness spreads: suspicion, now, mounting up into terror. A case of terrible nerves seemingly without cause, like being torn in different directions. 

And then, just when it becomes unbearable, when he is surely encroaching on the doorstep of madness, what little stability he can still find in the dark drops out from under him. White noise and a shrill screeching fills his ears, grating on his senses. He is falling, falling, sharply and endlessly. His stomach swoops up into his throat and strange images flash before his eyes, nonsensical: a woman’s hard grey eyes, a red kite in a cloudy sky, the visage of a mountain range reflected in a still lake. The images seem to have no connection to one another, but it still somehow makes sense that they should be there. The terror as Dean unexpectedly feels the sensation of falling strikes him mute. It is real, visceral, heart-stopping, and then – to make matters worse – a new symptom flashes in.

His phantom limbs are burning, cracking, ultimately severing, before they are shoved into sleeves too rigid to contain them. What remains then of his raw and aching skin is prodded with metal that is too cold to feel anything but foreign as it is lodged between his bones like splinters shoved underneath fingernails, sensitive tissue cruelly disrupted by intrusion. His life has become constant discomfort, forcibly living. He writhes in the sheets trying to escape it. And even in incredible pain, there is a hopeless drive towards some unknowable goal, the same hunger from before only magnified to a deep and profound longing that hurts worse than any physical torture ever could.

Dean wakes up with tears in his eyes. The tips of his fingers still tingle.

These are not his memories that he is experiencing. And yet, they are. Even now, as the minutes tick by and Dean sits up to try and distance himself from the dream, feelings and images settle into his bones like weeds: tough and continuously mutating.

Dean brings his raw hands to his face and stifles a sob within his palms, still deeply disturbed. In the ever-consuming darkness of yet another night on his own, he can’t remember now what he’d been running from, before. Whatever bad memories he had lost, he reasoned that they could not possibly be worse than this. This inescapable and literally crippling feeling of loss and loneliness could destroy someone, wear them down over time. That’s the awful, unexpected thing about emptiness: even something without its own weight can become the heaviest burden on the soul. 

He didn’t really change anything, he realizes. He’s only made it harder on himself, replacing bad things with more bad things. Shit, he picked the worst possible customer in Castiel. All he (unintentionally) got in return was a few bucks and newer, more interesting fodder for his deep-rooted anxieties, more fuel for the fire. He yearns for some comfort, but of course he’s given it all away. There are no available coping mechanisms built into the tragedy he’s inherited. The emptiness inside him drains.

 _So this is living_ , he wonders. Empty vessels, each and every one of them, seeking comfort in the cold, dark night. It just isn’t fair.

The tears have stopped now at least. Already the blind panic from the dream is slipping away, becoming less real as the visible world solidifies around him once more. He dwells in the feeling of his own skin against his lips, the hum of the fluorescents in the hall, the fading smell of laundry detergent in the sheets. And it’s selfish of him, to find relief in these memories’ disappearance, their inauthenticity, because the person that made them is still out there and he can’t just run away from them like Dean can.

This is how Castiel feels every day.

Dean lifts his face from his hands and slowly lowers them into his lap. He stares at the ceiling and listens to the buzz of the electric billboard outside, mutts barking, the air traffic up above, a loud laugh in the street. He swallows, but it doesn’t go all the way down.

“Why?” he whispers, voice hoarse.

Dean sits there for a very long time, heart aching with sympathy. For himself, for Castiel, for humanity. Tears have dried on his cheeks by the time that the sun comes up.

He never gets an answer to his question.

 

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Dean still has his sweats on under his leather jacket when he leaves his room. He carefully shuts the big door behind him like he’s fleeing a crime scene, eyes darting this way and that in the alley. He feels a prickle at the back of his neck and turns.

Something in him eases when he finds Castiel waiting against the wall. The uneasy film that has been clinging to him all night lifts a little.

“Hello, Dean,” he says.

Dean breathes out. “Hey, Cas.”

They fall into orbit naturally, perhaps irreversibly.

“I was just looking for you,” Dean tells him.

Castiel’s mouth screws up, regretful. “It’s painful,” Castiel tells him, eyes searching his. “To live a life I know I never had.”

 _It isn’t fair that, in my memories, I have arms and legs and a heart and that, in the now – as this me – I don’t,_ is what he means. It’s bittersweet.

Then Castiel smiles at him, sad and ironic. “I’m only faking it, aren’t I?”

Normally, Dean would tell him to get lost. He’s in the business of faking it. In the back of every customer’s mind, they know that the service Dean provides is not a _real_ one. He sees it in their eyes when they come crawling back days later, the luster gone and replaced again by hopelessness. He’s become desensitized to it. If he tried to care about all that, he’d kill himself with the hurt. Normally, Dean would kick this sad sack back into the gutter and ask him what the hell he expected.

But Castiel is broken in all the same ways he is, he thinks. He knows because he dreams through Castiel’s eyes.

So he shakes his head instead. “You’re human where it counts,” Dean promises.

Dean fits his palm, cleansed with salt, to the back of Castiel’s neck and draws him closer. Their foreheads knock and then rest together. A spark jumps between them.

“I guess we just need to make some better memories,” Dean murmurs. 

Castiel nods. Their noses brush. “Ones we can both keep.”

Dean licks his lips. “Yeah, Cas. Exactly.”

Castiel’s eyes follow the path of Dean’s tongue.

“I want to take you for a cup of coffee,” he says. Slowly, so that each of the words makes its proper impact.

Dean blinks and his fingers stutter on the back of Castiel’s neck. “Coffee. Yeah. Sounds good.”

 

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He feels sixteen again as they walk toward the diner two blocks over, swinging his hands and brushing the side of Dean’s with his pinky finger. Back then, Robin had laughed, and flipped her hair, and just taken his hand in hers, bold when he couldn’t be –

Castiel shakes his head and can’t quite hold back the groan that pitches forth.

Dean notices, smiling a little out the corner of his mouth. “Whatcha thinking about?” he asks coyly. 

Castiel huffs. “Your youth, I imagine. I certainly never dated a girl named Robin.”

Dean tilts his head. “Robin, huh? Doesn’t ring a bell. You sure that wasn’t you?” 

Castiel nods. “Yes, I’m sure,” he says. He has to be. Sure, that is. “When I woke after my accident, I had no memory of my life before,” he recites to himself. “It has to be you.”

Dean scoffs. “‘Accident.’” 

“Excuse me?” 

Dean waves a hand. He kicks a pebble down the sidewalk as they go; it veers off in front of Castiel, and Dean jogs a few steps ahead to kick it back. “Some guy hit you with his truck and left you for dead,” he states bluntly. “Nothin’ accidental about that.”

Castiel slows, and then picks up his pace so that he’s even with Dean again. The pebble is abandoned as they narrowly avoid a cracked piece of pavement, slanting up at nearly 45 degrees. 

“How did you know that?” he asks.

Dean taps his forehead. “‘S in here,” he confides. “Stuff always carries through, you know, but nothing like… nothing like that, usually.” Dean shivers. “Must have just let it run too deep. Left the cable in too long. I’ve never done a transfer that big before.”

Castiel hums. “Interesting.”

“Meh,” Dean rebuts. “Hey. This doesn’t sound like what you signed up for, anyway. I know you paid for it and all, but I’d kind of like to meet that Robin girl.”

The diner is in sight now, just across the street. They have to wait for the light to change before they can cross, though no one is out on the roads this time of night anyway. Dean winks, but he doesn’t need to. 

“Of course,” Castiel answers immediately. He’d come back hoping to propose the exact same thing. And if Dean has been reliving his accident… well, just as Dean said, he didn’t sign up to be saddled with a new trauma when he’d clearly been so desperate to be rid of his own. “I’ll give it all back. All of it,” he promises. He tries to infuse as much sorrow and regret as possible into his tone, so that Dean understands. “This whole thing was a mistake.”

He takes a deep breath and reaches out to hold the diner door open for Dean. When he moves forward to the threshold, Castiel shoots out a hand to stop him.

“One cup of coffee,” he insists, fear creeping in on his request. “And then we set this right.”

Dean smiles easily. “You’re the boss.”

With a nod, Castiel waves Dean through the door. He watches the soft light bounce off the worn leather at his shoulders as he follows. 

The diner is set up just as all the others are, or close enough to it. He finds himself turning down his chin, eyes glazing over, and he wonders where the impulse comes from. He frowns, remembering Kara, Mandy, each face that makes a new day memorable. He forces himself to look up, for his eyes to soak up the details, to find something unique that will make this trip, like all the others, special. He realizes with a touch of sadness that for him – for Dean? – the magic in these places is gone. 

It’s not a very nice way to live.

He sits dejectedly on the other side of a booth that Dean has already chosen for them. Dean’s there, picking at the exposed stuffing under a section of cracked vinyl, with half a smirk on his face. He only shrugs when Castiel raises an eyebrow at him.

Castiel taps out the timeless staccato of an old rock song while he scans the floor for an available waitress. Dean watches intently and tries to copy his tapping, but he can’t quite seem to get the hang of the rhythm.

“That’s my brain making you do that, huh?” he asks, distant.

Castiel, distracted, looks back at him. “Hm? Oh. I don’t know. Probably.”

Dean laughs. He looks at their hands on the tabletop and lifts his own to inspect them. “It’s weird, you know?” he asks quietly. “Being a stranger to yourself. Like, I have no idea how I got this,” Dean admits, showing off his knuckles and the white edges of shiny scar tissue there. “Noticed ‘em earlier. Weird.” 

Castiel smiles. “Tenth grade,” he tells him gently. “You punched Matthew Feldman in the mouth and cut yourself on his braces. You needed more stitches than he did.” 

Dean frowns. “Huh. Well, what’d I punch him for?” 

Castiel turns the memory over carefully. He ignores the fact that Matthew - a chubby redheaded kid with an uneven sneer - says a name that sounds an awful lot like _Castiel_ as he re-watches the confrontation unfold. “He was harassing someone in the marching band, which was needless. Mostly, you were just angry and looking for a fight.”

Dean’s frown deepens. “I sound like an ass.”

“On the contrary,” Castiel argues, leaning forward. “I think that what you did was very noble. You could have found a fight in any number of places, and instead you chose the one that would actually mean something.” 

Dean stares openly at him, and the waitress finally appears by their table so Dean suddenly has a lot less to say.

“I know you,” she greets cheerfully, but Castiel has no way of knowing which one of them she’s talking to.

“Coffee, please,” he orders, skipping pleasantries. “Him too.”

“That all?”

Dean grins his confirmation and winks.

“How do you take it?” Castiel asks. His hand stops midway to the box of sugar packets. He knows the answer as soon as he asks the question, but he’s wondering what Dean will say now that he doesn’t have past experience to guide him.

He shrugs. “A little sweet, I guess,” he says. 

“You used to drink it black, because it reminds you of your father,” Castiel tells him. 

Dean’s eyes brighten, amused. “Maybe I should take it black then.”

“No,” Castiel blurts. “Um. You really don’t like it as much that way. It’s too bitter to be enjoyable.”

Dean smiles at him. “It’s getting a little creepy that you do that, man. Loosen up a little, huh? Leave the baggage at the door.”

Castiel scoffs and tears open an unlucky sugar packet. He absentmindedly spills the granules onto the table and pushes them around with the tip of his nail. “I think that’s easier said than done.” 

Dean barks a laugh, sharp and sudden. “Guess we wouldn’t be in this mess if we could,” he admits. He purses his lips and blows Castiel’s sugar off the table and into his lap. It’s only once the table is clear that Castiel remembers that _he’s_ never made an unnecessary mess like that in his life. He does, however, recall Dean passing the time in diners like that since he was small. 

“Talk to me about something that isn’t me,” Dean requests. “I thought that was the point of this.”

Castiel folds his hands on the tabletop. There, that feels more natural. More right. “What would you like to talk about?” he asks. 

Dean leans forward on his elbows, unnervingly close to Castiel’s own face. “I don’t know. Tell me something that scares you.”

Castiel narrows his eyes. “Dying, I suppose. What about you?”

“Uh,” Dean answers. “Germs. Heights. Walking under ladders. Just normal stuff.”

With a tilt of his head, Castiel asks, “You’re superstitious?”

“A little, I guess,” Dean confesses. He knocks the saltshaker with the back of his hand. “Do you believe in ghosts? Aliens?” he asks.

Castiel raises an eyebrow. “Do I believe in life other than us, you mean?”

“Yeah.” 

“Of course,” Castiel says. “I’d be foolish not to.” 

“Yeah, right? The universe is huge,” Dean says.

Castiel nods. “It’s statistically improbable that we are utterly alone. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Dean actually smiles. “Yeah,” he sighs, almost dreamily. “Kind of comforting, huh?”

Castiel tilts his head, thinking. “I don’t know,” he murmurs. “I guess that would depend on the alien.”

Dean throws his head back and laughs, slapping his hand on the laminate. Castiel positively beams in response. He just can’t help himself. He saves this memory, this one that is his very own and a result of his work on the planet, in a very safe place close to his heart. This, to him, is worth far more than what he paid to take from Dean.

They talk for a long time, about a great many things. They become so engrossed in their conversation, in fact, that Castiel doesn’t even notice their waitress coming and going, leaving coffee and refilling their cups when necessary. His own cup goes cold extraordinarily quickly, he thinks. He barely even registers that by now that the breakfast rush has begun to fill in the space around them, regular like clockwork. He only notices there is a crowd when he finds that he has to speak a little louder for Dean to hear him across the table. 

“This is kind of stupid, huh?” Dean asks, cheeks a little pinker than they were before. 

Castiel narrows his eyes, still in a good mood from the conversation. “Why?”

Dean laughs a little under his breath. “Well, you know. I’ve got your head in my head, and you’ve got my head in… your head,” he says, losing himself in the sentence. “We already know everything about each other, don’t we?”

Castiel can’t help but smile encouragingly at Dean. “There’s a difference between knowing and living.”

“You think?”

Castiel nods. “Yes, of course. For example, I know that I have never seen the movie _Caddyshack._ But _you_ have, so I know what happens. Does that mean I should never watch it again?” 

Dean sputters and gapes at him. “Wait. I think I remember that, a little. Dude, how _dare_ you. It’s a classic!”

Castiel tilts his head, grinning. “Please, do go on.” 

“Well, uh,” Dean stammers, turning red. “I don’t exactly remember the details. I just know that, um – ”

Castiel’s eyes soften. “You used to watch it with Claire Novak. You babysat for her after you got your GED to earn some extra cash.”

Dean snorts. “Sure, that’s it.” He tilts his head, contemplative. “Sorry. I can’t really… I can’t really relate.”

Castiel frowns and leans back into his side of the booth. “I’m afraid I didn’t leave you with much experience to draw on. As far as I know, I’ve never been anyone’s babysitter.”

Dean rubs at his forehead with the pads of his fingers, still frowning down at the table. Castiel empathizes. “Headache?”

Dean laughs quietly. “It’ll pass.” His eyes clear and he jerks his head up to look Castiel in the eyes. “You feeling ok?”

Castiel pauses and assesses himself. With the wire in his arm repaired and good company to distract him, he does actually feel ok. “Right now, I am. Thank you for asking.”

He can’t remember the last time that anyone _had_ asked – at least not with this much sincerity. Dean turns his eyes back down to the table, a smile tucked into his cheek.

They speak like the oldest of friends, even though it’s been such a short time. As he watches Dean form words around a smile, lean back into his seat like he doesn’t mind taking up the space, Castiel can’t help but compare this man to the one he met in a bar what seems like a lifetime ago. _This_ Dean, candid and comfortable, is the raw form of a man unburdened by his heavy memories. Dean wants to have his past belong to him again, but it’s only just now, in this moment, that Castiel truly understands why Dean was so willing to give it up in the first place.

Dean is so much happier without the weight of it.

Just watching him haltingly explain a beloved but half-remembered movie inspires a sort of fierce protectiveness in Castiel that he isn’t entirely familiar with, to shield this small, bright spot from a world that would extinguish it a second time, without remorse. It’s the same way that he feels when he thinks back on all of the selfless deeds that Dean has done in the past, nestled with care in Castiel’s own mind, hardly touched for fear of corrupting them.

Castiel hates himself for it a little, but he does wonder. Should he take back his promise? For Dean’s own good?

If he cares for him so, shouldn’t he want to spare Dean his pain? 

He sets his cup back on its saucer. Dean doesn’t pause in whatever he’s saying – Castiel has lost track, swimming in too many thoughts – but he does fall silent when Castiel utters a solemn, “Dean.”

Dean looks up. “Yeah?”

Open curiosity. Nobody has hurt him yet. He doesn’t have a reason to expect the worst of people. If Castiel wants Dean to live relatively pain-free, he’ll have to be the one that betrays him first.

Castiel wilts at the thought. “I, um.” His fingers itch towards the sugar packets again.

Dean blinks big eyelashes, and Castiel is torn.

“I was thinking of ordering a piece of pie. Would you like to split it?”

 _Coward,_ he thinks to himself. _You’re a coward._

Dean juts his lip out in thought. “What flavor?” he asks, like that makes a difference.

Castiel shrugs, having not thought this far ahead. “I don’t know. Uh…” He racks his brain. “Apple,” it supplies. 

Even in the sallow yellow light of the diner fluorescents, Dean’s eyes seem to shine. His face doesn’t look any less appealing when it softens, cheeks rounding out and mouth curling up. “Sounds good,” he says.

Castiel smiles, too, though the gesture is pained. He hopes that Dean doesn’t notice. He twists in his seat to avoid making eye contact with the man, and instead tries to signal their waitress. Dean’s coffee cup has been empty for some time anyway. 

The pie that their waitress brings is very obviously not homemade, but prepackaged in a tin from some store. Castiel is so surprised he can recognize this fact by taste alone that he actually enjoys it. (The child in his memories would usually whine or scoff, choke it down reluctantly.) Dean doesn’t seem to feel too strongly about it one way or the other, just digs into his side of the pastry with a healthy enthusiasm and a clear preference for the pieces smothered in melted ice cream. 

“This is awesome,” he mumbles around a mouthful.

The tines of Castiel’s fork scrape unpleasantly on the plate. He abandons it altogether and swipes a finger through the sticky mess on his side of the dessert, quickly sucking the crumbs away in a show of unprofessionalism. “Mhm,” he agrees.

As if just now really noticing that he has one, Dean’s eyes get stuck on the corner of Castiel’s mouth, where his fingers still hover. He swallows and gives a casual smile, and Castiel pretends not to notice the way that Dean’s eyes darken just a shade. 

“We should probably be going soon,” Castiel tells him. “It’s getting crowded.”

Dean looks up, stunned. “Oh, yeah. It’s morning now.” He punctuates this statement with a yawn.

Castiel smiles at him. “Didn’t you sleep well?” he asks.

Dean squeezes the sleep out of his eyes and rubs a hand through his short, spiky hair. “Huh? Oh, uh, not really, to tell you the truth.”

Castiel frowns. “Why not?”

Dean shrugs. “Just my cross to bear, I guess. Doomed to four hours a night no matter what I got floating around in my head. You gonna eat that?”

Castiel pushes the plate towards Dean. “Help yourself.”

Dean does. He pushes the remaining pieces around for a moment, soaking up the flavor of the ice cream in the crust, and purses his lips.

“What about you?” he asks. “How’d you sleep?”

The ceiling fan above Castiel starts to turn. He looks up and watches the fan blades spin – the whole fixture rattles and the pull chains clink against the light bulb. He blinks and hears the gears in his joints shake the same way. “I didn’t.” 

Dean finishes up the pie and even offers to pay for everything. “Hey, you got our drinks the other night, didn’t you?”

Reluctantly admitting that yes, he technically had, Dean throws some bills down onto the table. He winks. “You’re a pretty easy date, Cas. Second time in a row I’m getting you to come home with me.”

Castiel rolls his eyes and elbows him on their way out of the booth. Dean breathlessly laughs through the pain and follows Castiel out the door, waving to the hostess on his way out. “Good luck,” he calls to her.

“Thank you,” Castiel adds.

“Have a good one!” she chirps after them.

Dean looks over his shoulder at her as they walk out of the parking lot. “I like her. She had a nice smile.”

“She did,” Castiel agrees, nodding. His mind is somewhere else, though. Tampa, he remembers. A waitress at another establishment, with long blonde hair and thick thighs and a birthmark on her shoulder in the shape of a heart. _You have a beautiful smile,_ he had said to her. 

Not him, he reminds himself. Dean had said that. Dean is the charmer of the two of them. He must remember that.

“Hey,” Dean says, knocking their shoulders together. “You good?”

“Yes,” Castiel tells him. He wipes the look off his face. “I’m fine. Lead the way.”

Dean smiles and does just that, quickening his pace to put him two steps ahead of Castiel. He frequently walks backwards just to meet Castiel’s eyes, to offer commentary on an advertisement or a display in a window. Castiel smiles and watches the way Dean’s eyes snag on street signs. His smile flickers.

Castiel takes his elbow. “It’s this way,” he reminds him gently.

Dean snaps his fingers. “Right. I knew that.”

“I’m sure you did.”

Castiel ends up being the one that sort of leads them back to the brothel. Dean’s excuses are flimsy – “It looks different in the day time, is all.” – but he doesn’t seem all that committed to them to begin with. He shrugs and his eyes are unconcerned. He walks without a limp in his step.

“Hey,” Dean exclaims when they get to the room. He turns to Castiel in the doorway and grins, pointing to the microwave display: _hi, dean!_ “How cool is that?”

Castiel nods and looks around a little. Dean is right: it looks different here in the daytime. “Very cool,” he says. “Charlie’s work, I think.”

Dean’s brow creases, but he shrugs it off. He shakes off his jacket and sighs, smacking his lips. “Make yourself at home,” he says. “Let’s do this.”

Castiel makes a slow circle around the room, trying to disguise the way that he clenches his jaw. “Mm,” he replies, not agreement or dissent.

“But first,” Dean says, “I gotta piss like a race horse.” He flashes a grin. “Is that from something? Ah, who cares. Too much coffee.”

Castiel is forced to stop his pacing when Dean gets up in his face. A severe finger is pointed under his nose. 

“Don’t go anywhere,” Dean commands.

Castiel nods. With a satisfied smile, Dean crosses to the bathroom, whistling tunelessly as he shuts the door behind him. 

Castiel gives it two, maybe three seconds. He looks around the room one final time and sighs to himself.

He slips out the front door as quietly as the thief he knows himself to be. He also makes the mistake of looking over his shoulder. _Like Orpheus,_ he thinks mournfully. _Looking back makes good things vanish. You should have left it at the good memories you kept._

He turns up his coat collar as he leaves the building, fleeing to the open arms of harmless anonymity once more. 

It’s for the best, Castiel tells himself. It’s for the best.

 

01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101

 

Blending in has never been Castiel’s strong suit. His chin tips too high when he walks, and the way that his eyes narrow as they stare straight ahead, unblinking, intimidates people. The way that he shuffles his feet instead of picking them up, and his long and open coat also make people suspicious of him. 

Luckily for him, it begins to rain. Heavy clouds drape along the tops of towering city buildings and cloak the streets in darkness. When it rains, heads tip down to stare at the pavement instead of darting curiously over faces approaching on the other side of the sidewalk. Hoods and hats and umbrellas obscure faces as Castiel passes, keeping him hidden in plain sight without him having to do a single thing.

Of course, as lucky as this is, Castiel can never forget that he is partly made of metal, no matter what his synthetic memories tell him. If it rains too hard, and for too long, steam starts to rise from the small joints that bind him together. His knuckles already groan and stick slightly if he tries to bend them too much: a result of rust building up. Shorting wires he can replace, fine, but scraping out rust from his plating seems about as difficult as manually wiping plaque from an artery. 

The quiet, wet swish of his shoes skimming through water and gravel and discarded sheets of paper is almost hypnotizing as he wanders. He looks to his left, out across traffic, and keeps his eyes on a beautiful stone building. The banner spanning the front face of it is cut into a grid, and the panels flash a different piece of a giant puzzle as he walks: an ad for a restaurant chain. The charismatic face of some television celebrity splits open as he flashes a cheesy smile and bites into a giant burger with a long name attached to it, flickering in all its megawatt glory. Curiously, one of the square panels has gone dark, so that the gentleman has only his left ear. Castiel watches someone on slippery scaffolding pry it up and out of the way to reach the wiring underneath, and wonders if perhaps he could pry his own panels up and scrub them clean.

He nearly walks right into a newsstand, distracted as he is by the advertisement. A motorcycle honks and squeals its tires as it moves around him, single headlight blinding in its intensity. Castiel surreptitiously checks his hands and moves to huddle under an awning, next to a drooping rack of entertainment magazines. A busker, to his right, blares a cacophony of noise from a set of speakers while he bangs on an overturned bucket - water droplets go flying on every beat. Nobody spares him a glance. Castiel picks up a newspaper, just to have something to do.

 _Roman Enterprises Acquires Pharmaceutical Company,_ reads the headline. Castiel flips to another page.

All around him, noise and color thrive, even under the cover of darkness. A hunched older woman in a translucent poncho carries buckets of rain-drenched t-shirts on her hips, yelling out bargains in a barely intelligible language known only to the locals. Holographic advertisements twitch spastically alongside graffiti on the support beams of a parking garage. Lanterns glow and signs sag and lights flash and cars honk their horns, and in the middle of it all is Castiel, still as a stone, pretending to read a newspaper. The vendor for the newsstand he has found shelter in doesn’t appear to be anywhere in sight. Despite the activity going on around him, he is cut off from it somehow. Well and truly alone out here, just as he wanted.

A familiar bitterness rises up with the feeling, but also a sense of purpose as well. His suffering is not for nothing. He is acting in the service of a… well, a friend.

 _This is not exclusion_ , Castiel tells himself. _It is martyrdom_. That takes the sting off. He would be almost proud of himself if he didn't feel so shitty. 

Time passes, as it is wont to do. Castiel puts more and more distance between Dean and himself as he contemplates his next step. Eventually, the rain starts to get to him and he has to duck inside one more time.

He should leave town. He should find a new place that looks the same as this one and keep doing what he’s been doing. Maybe he should write a book? “The Man in my Head,” by Castiel. It might make a good story. It would certainly help him preserve what he knows of Dean while he can. 

“Hey,” snaps the line cook through the window behind the counter. Castiel lifts his head.

The man sneers at him, pudgy and balding but severe all the same. His apron says “Crowley.” He waves a spatula like it means business.

“Order something on the menu or get out,” he says to Castiel. “You’re taking up valuable counter space.”

Castiel sighs and narrows his eyes at the man, not particularly in the mood. “I’ll have some waffles.”

“Great,” Crowley crows. “Do you care what’s on them?”

Castiel shakes his head. “No.”

Crowley scoffs. “Five minutes, Princess.” 

Castiel waves him off. 

A stack of three plain and soggy waffles are eventually delivered under his nose. Castiel pokes at one and kindly asks his waitress for some whipped cream, if she has any. He must have a particularly dour look on his face as he asks this, because she brings him back the whole can.

Depressed about leaving Dean behind and still going back and forth on his own choices, he tips his head back and aims the nozzle directly into his mouth.

He sets the can down with a sigh and shakes his head. 

Somebody’s hands curl into the shoulders of his coat. He hadn’t heard anyone coming because of the general business of the diner. He has only a second to process before his cheek is smashed into the counter laminate, dangerously close to his plate of untouched waffles.

“You son of a bitch,” Dean hisses into his ear. Castiel can feel the hard lines of him pressed up against his back. He doesn’t struggle. He _is_ an absolute son of a bitch.

“Hey!” Crowley yells through the window. “Take it outside!”

Dean yanks hard on Castiel’s coat, forcing him back up from the counter. Castiel lets Dean drag him out of the diner, onto the street, and clenches his jaw.

“How did you find me?” he asks, irritated.

Dean’s face is hard, his eyes flashing incredulously. “Are you kidding me? I _know you_ , asshole. I’ve been to three different Biggerson’s this morning looking for your fugly ass coat.”

Castiel hesitates, but does, ultimately, have to concede the point as they come to a stop around the back of the diner.

“I’m… sorry,” he says, just to have something to say. He isn’t entirely sure that he means it.

Dean exhales, hard. “You’re _sorry_?”

He doesn’t see Dean’s fist flying, and he doesn’t really feel it where it makes contact with his jaw either. His head snaps sideways because of the inertia. Dean’s yelp of pain is an almost comical contrast to the distant throbbing that he feels in his face.

“You’re going to need a bigger word than ‘sorry,’” Dean all but yells, cradling his sore hand to his chest.

Castiel grits his teeth. “I’m doing this for you, Dean.”

Dean looks murderous. “For me,” he repeats, incredulously. “Yeah. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I know you, too,” Castiel interrupts. “I see inside you. I see your guilt, your anger, confusion. Without it, you'll be at peace. You deserve that, Dean. You’re a good man.”

Dean is already shaking his head. “Don’t you think that’s my call to make?” he growls.

Castiel narrows his eyes and tips his chin up. Dean has maybe an inch on him, but Castiel is determined that he won’t to be able to use it. Dean is the one who approached him in that dark bar. 

“You already did, once,” he warns him.

And it’s the truth; Dean had chosen to unload his crap on the first willing person to cross his path.

Dean’s face goes cold. He leans back and his eyes briefly drop to the ground.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “I made a bad choice. I thought I knew better. But I was _wrong_ , Cas.” 

Castiel doesn’t say anything. He holds his ground. 

“I was wrong,” Dean repeats. His hands hover uncertainly out in front of him – even the hurt one – palms up and entreating in his open honesty. “I shouldn’t have dumped everything on you. I shouldn’t have run away from my life. I get that, and I’m sorry. It’ll be alright.”

Castiel’s shoulders drop a little as his defenses lower. “How do you know?” he asks. “You were miserable before. How do you know that you won’t be again?”

“I don’t, I guess,” Dean confesses. He reaches out and grasps the sleeve of Castiel’s trench coat. “But I think we were onto something earlier.” 

Castiel frowns, and he doesn’t let Dean pull his hand out of his pocket. “Earlier?”

“When we tried to make better memories,” Dean reminds him. He’s smiling now, soft and secret.

Castiel gets caught up in his eyes, staring helplessly back as his argument begins to make less and less sense to himself. 

“I don’t think my past was ever really the problem,” Dean admits. 

“That’s very self-aware for someone who doesn’t even know himself,” Castiel comments, instead of admitting that Dean is one hundred percent correct – and not just about himself.

Dean nudges him. “Ass,” he mutters.

Castiel doesn’t say anything. “Well… what do we do now?” he asks hesitantly. He doesn’t want Dean to be mad at him anymore. He won’t be able to live with himself. 

Dean purses his lips. “You still don’t really believe me.”

Castiel sighs. “You have an incredible strength in you, Dean. I deeply admire that. I just don’t think that you should _have_ to be strong all the time.”

Dean nods. “Thanks, but no thanks, Cas. I don’t need you trying to protect me.” He leans forward, and their noses brush together again.

Castiel takes a slow breath in and closes his eyes. It aches that this feels familiar, safe.

“Not that I don’t appreciate it,” Dean murmurs.

Castiel’s eyelids flutter. “I suggest a compromise,” he says.

Dean hums. “I’m listening.”

Castiel withdraws his hand from his coat pocket. He curls his fingers around Dean’s, one by one, adjusting their torque and position with the utmost care and gentleness. 

It’s a pattern that he hadn’t realized he’d noticed until just now. In Dean’s memories, he sees a lot of backs turned. John’s, Sam’s, Lisa’s, and now his own. Castiel sighs.

“I’ll give you your memories back,” he promises. Dean inhales like he wants to speak, but Castiel cuts him off. “But I want to stay with you through it.”

The request takes a moment to process through him before Dean frowns. It obviously throws him. “You don’t have to do that. You don’t owe me anything, Cas.” 

“Those are my terms.” 

Dean sighs. He takes a step back and shakes his head, but he does not disentangle their fingers.

“Fine. Fine, we’ll do it your way. Let’s just go home, ok?”

Castiel nods. “Alright.”

Dean doesn’t need help back to his dingy building this time. He walks with purpose, and with pride, and doesn’t swagger like he’s trying to take his time or delay their arrival. He keeps Castiel’s hand close in his.

“Your hands are cold,” Dean comments, and Castiel tries not to take it as an affront.

The room is the same as it’s been the last few times that Castiel’s been invited here, though there is some food on the counter now: a half-eaten sandwich that Dean has not bothered to stick in the refrigerator since his exit. Dean swipes it off the counter as they walk in and tosses it in the trash. 

“You know the drill,” Dean tells him in a gruff voice, shedding his jacket as he goes. It slides down his shoulders and bunches around his elbows, and he struggles a little with getting his arms out.

Castiel stills Dean’s hands. Close to Dean’s back, he pulls Dean’s jacket off himself. He can hear the way that Dean’s breath hitches at the contact, and he knows what it means. He hangs the jacket of the back of the door, and, without saying a word, he moves towards the bed.

“Uh. Thank – yeah.”

Castiel kicks off his shoes and nudges them under the bed this time. He lies back against the pillows with his hands crossed against his chest, patiently staring up at the ceiling. There’s a sizable water stain spreading down the upper corner of the wall, into the molding. Castiel blinks at it like it might be persuaded to go away with the proper intimidation. 

He hears the kitchen drawer open to his right, and waits for the muffled sound of Dean’s footsteps, thick boots on thin carpet. The memory of the last time that he was here is much more potent, he realizes, than anything that Dean has given him. He was physically in this room, not just remembering it through someone else’s memories, and so these sounds have been inscribed in him. He can practically feel the warmth of Dean laying down beside him -

He doesn’t realize that his eyes have closed again. A weight settles not next to him, but over him, so he opens his eyes to look.

Dean carefully straddles him, denim-clad thighs framing Castiel’s hips. Dean’s lips are parted and his eyes search Castiel’s carefully, disbelievingly. The cable hangs loosely from his fingers between them. 

Without breaking their eye contact, Castiel slides his hands up to Dean’s belt. 

Dean’s free hand closes over Castiel’s own, stopping him. He holds the cable out.

“You do it,” he says, voice strained.

Slowly, Castiel removes his hands from Dean’s belt and takes the cable. He rubs his thumb across the ridges of the wire.

“You’re sure,” he says, only barely asking. 

Dean nods. He extends his arm, with his wrist presented upwards. 

Gingerly, Castiel takes the pale flesh in his free hand. He pulls him closer, so that Dean is nearly leaning over him. He can feel the hot puff of Dean’s breath on his forehead as he rubs his fingers soothingly along the open spot by the veins, vulnerable and gaping. He runs the barest touch of a fingertip across it and Dean shivers. 

Castiel gently eases the cable in alongside his thumb. He gives it a moment to settle, and then does the same for himself.

Castiel leans back to meet Dean’s eyes. He returns his hands to Dean’s hips and waits.

Dean squeezes his thighs tighter, holding Castiel down. “Gotta make sure you don’t ditch me again,” Dean mutters.

Castiel pats Dean’s lower back. “I’m right here,” he promises.

“Sorry I pulled you into this,” Dean tells him.

Castiel shakes his head. “If you recall, I let myself be pulled.”

In fact, he’s starting to believe that maybe this is exactly what he needed. This will be his first night in the city that won’t be spent wandering empty streets. He doesn’t say that he could throw Dean from him in an instant if he truly wanted to; he’s pretty sure that Dean knows. 

“Well, hey. It’s the thought that counts, right?” Dean says, with a wink. 

It is with this remark that the two-way connection snaps into place, like a computer being booted up. A heightened, second awareness comes to him. The nerves in Castiel’s fingertips tingle where they rest against Dean. There’s a bit of a lag, but when Castiel runs his hand in a small circle, he feels the touch echoed on himself.

“You feel that?” Dean asks quietly.

Castiel nods and keeps stroking, mesmerized. “It’s different when we… touch.” 

Dean nods. “I don’t usually do this,” he says. 

“I can’t usually feel this,” Castiel marvels, almost in a laugh. When Dean lifts a hand to his jaw, Castiel can feel his own stubble, the coarseness of his skin and the scars hidden beneath. Dean traces them with his finger.

“What happens now?” Castiel asks him. “I’ve never tried to give anyone a memory before.”

Dean licks his lips, eyes following the path that his fingers have forged. “It’s like a road,” he tells him. Castiel swallows. “You just follow it down.”

Castiel stares at the center of Dean’s chest, soothed by the unhurried regularity of the plaid pattern, and tries to follow his instructions. 

 _Like a road_ , he thinks. _Think about Dean._

Castiel starts out shakily, recalling only his own experiences, touched by memories that aren’t his. The walk to the hardware store, and the things he’d seen: wandering the aisles and getting caught up in a childhood he didn’t have. It helps, finding that starting point. And Dean’s right: it is very much like following a road.

He carefully unearths more than he knew he had, guiding them gently through their connection and up and out towards Dean. With each memory that he rediscovers, his own reaction attaches itself along. His amusement at the time when Sam and Dean jumped off the roof shed; his excitement and affection for a young and gap-toothed Sam at a professional wrestling match with their father; his deep sadness and concern when Dean first crashed the Impala; his fierce admiration for a lonely man, promising to call his little brother sometime when he finds work.

 _I wish I’d known you then,_ Castiel can’t help thinking.

Dean gasps. Castiel looks up at his face and veers off the road.

A few tears have gathered along Dean’s lash line. Castiel reaches up, upset. 

Dean shakes his head. “Keep going.”

Castiel pulls his hand down. Dean grabs it, hard.

Cheeseburgers, drive-in movies, sex in the back of a pick-up truck. Hot summer days, odd construction jobs in the humidity, Charlie’s grinning face. He collects them all, everything he can think of. “How do I know when I’m done?” Castiel asks. “What if I keep something by mistake?” 

Dean shakes his head. “You won’t. Just let it run,” he asks.

Castiel tries to nod, but then Dean shifts in his lap. He braces himself with a hand against Castiel’s chest, and Castiel loses his train of thought.

“What?” Dean asks, barely a second before Castiel’s own memory of the situation hits him.

There is nowhere to hide when they are like this. The cable that ties them together creates an open link where sensory information floats freely from one to the other, in a pure form. Castiel isn’t entirely certain that the curiosity and the longing that he feels is coming from him or from Dean. The longer they spend like this, the harder it is to tell. With every touch and every thought echoed back across the bond, it is as if they are one person in two bodies.

“Whoa,” Dean breathes, voice shaking.

“Uh,” Castiel stutters. “Is this – ”

“No,” Dean says, anticipating the question. He scratches his fingers lightly across Castiel’s chest. “Definitely not normal.”

Castiel shifts underneath Dean, and stutters when the thighs around his hips only tighten in response, as if to hold him still. “Do that again,” Castiel says. 

Dean rolls his head forward. “What?” he asks, in a whisper. “This?” He kneads again at the hard stretch of skin and muscle beneath the thin stretch of Castiel’s shirt, and Castiel squeezes Dean’s hand in his.

“Yes,” he sighs. 

Dean rocks back into his lap.

“Dean,” Castiel warns. “I’m – _ah_. I, um...” 

“What’s up?” Dean asks, sounding a little breathless himself.

Castiel’s free hand, the one that isn’t being crushed by Dean’s grip, flits back up to the wide expanse of Dean’s back, applying a gentle and steady pressure.

“I’m having trouble staying on task,” Castiel confesses.

Dean huffs out a laugh. “I get that, yeah,” he says. He trails his hand down Castiel’s chest and squeezes his thighs again. 

“God,” he sighs, a touch of a whimper by the end. “Is that doing anything for you?”

“I think so,” Castiel says. He copies Dean’s move and drags his hand down his back, from shoulder to dimple.

Dean melts like butter in his hands. He lets out a quiet moan as his face heats, freckles standing out against the flush. “This is crazy,” he says. “I can feel everything. All at once.”

“Surely you’ve done this before,” Castiel murmurs. His hips buck up just when Dean bears down.

“ _Fuck_. Yeah, but, uh. Not like this. Not with anyone that… has me in their head already.”

Castiel tilts his head. It’s true, he has all of Dean in his head. All of him, every touch. 

He shakes his hand free from Dean’s, which is met with a sad and accusing look. “Hey, what - ”

He lets a memory float across the link. A one night stand, Layla, remarkable and remembered for the way that she leaned over Dean, touched him boldly and skillfully where others hadn’t. Castiel takes a page out of her book by sliding his hand up the meat of Dean’s flexed thigh and relishing the shiver he’s rewarded for it. His own leg twitches.

“Jesus,” laughs Dean. “It’s like watching porn and having the real thing at the same time.”

“Now who’s lucky?” Castiel says.

He doesn’t flinch when Dean’s grabby fingers get stuck under the collar of his shirt, slowly pulling away the fabric to look on at scars and sensitive trappings. He also doesn’t hear a protest as he follows suit, slipping a hand under Dean’s hem, right on his hips. They slowly get used to the shared flashes of skin-on-skin, together. Castiel can feel Dean growing hard against his belly. Castiel tilts up and feels himself responding in much the same way. 

“I’m not forcing you into anything, am I?” Dean asks, panting. He’s shakily working his way down the buttons of Castiel’s shirt and grinding himself back into Castiel’s lap as he goes. 

Castiel tenses and feels his nails dig into Dean’s skin: a bite of pain, a beautiful sting that sticks with the both of them. “I was going to ask you the same thing,” he replies. 

Dean grins, crooked and beautiful. The street lights his profile. “I think we’re good, then.” 

They touch and they think together. Castiel sits up and pulls his shirt off; Dean finally removes his belt. 

“How did this happen?” Castiel wonders, squeezing Dean tighter and closer. “How did we get here?”

Dean moans, digging his fingers into Castiel’s sides as he holds on for the ride. “Careful, buddy,” he pants. “It’s sounding awfully sentimental up there.”

He lifts his hand to brush the hair at Castiel’s temple, emphasizing his point. Castiel lets him - he lets Dean take him in hand, all of him, anything he wants. The payoff is too delicious: the way that his body feels like his, and not just a shell when he can feel it responding to another person, the way that Dean is so clearly enjoying himself and this feeling of closeness. _He really meant it,_ Castiel hears across their link. _He’s really staying._

“I could say the same,” Castiel teases. He relaxes his hands and brushes his fingertips down along Dean’s thighs, to the hot and sweaty creases of his knees.

Dean grins, jerking. “That tickles,” he says.

“I know,” Castiel tells him.

He can almost see the kiss coming in the way that Dean’s legs tighten around Castiel’s bare middle. Dean’s lips are soft and eager and sweet. Castiel can’t help thrusting up harder as they meet in an embrace, eyes slipping closed.

“You know,” Dean murmurs, dark and sexy. “This reminds me of the time I brought a guy into the back seat of my car – ”

Castiel cuts him off with another kiss. Dean’s back. His Dean, the one he’s gotten to know – but, oh. He never really left, did he? Those eyes, he knows the fire in them.

Everything comes to a standstill as he looks, building and then releasing in a quiet, boneless sigh. Dean swears, legs quaking from the strain of holding himself up.

“I remember that backseat,” Castiel tells him at last, after taking a moment to come back down.

“Oh, really?” Dean replies, suggestion to his words. He slides down Castiel’s body until he’s practically lying on top of him, sprawled out naked and as relaxed as Castiel has ever seen.

“Mhm.” He noses at Dean’s hair and squeezes his butt with both hands. “Shouldn’t I forget it now that I’ve returned everything to you?”

He can feel Dean frown against his skin, and then slowly he shakes his head. “We’re still connected,” he says, slowly.

Castiel looks down. The black cord has become wound around Dean’s wrist. Castiel can feel the plug tugging on his own skin if he focuses on it. He had been a little too preoccupied to notice earlier.

“So we are.”

He prods at the link, and they both fall silent. Unbeknownst to Castiel, while he was working on sending Dean’s memories back to him cloaked in the Trojan horse of his own reactions, he failed to notice that Dean had pushed his own across in return.

Castiel turns over those delicate few snapshots that he has left of Chuck’s workshop, of Castiel’s first moments back in the land of the living after his brush with death. He’s amazed to find new sensations woven in through the story: shock, and horror, and pity, but more than that, _outrage_. At Chuck? It’s vindicating, in a way. He reveals careful sympathy as Castiel revisits one of his first panic attacks, on a side street spent hiding from rushing traffic, too close to the curb, cars too close to hitting him - Castiel recounts the last few months, blurred together, and encounters... what? Longing?

“I wish I’d known you then,” Dean repeats quietly. “You shouldn’t have had to feel like that, man. That's messed up.”

Castiel blinks. “Do you mean that?”

Dean snorts, tugging on the cable between them. “You know I do.”

Castiel sighs. He raises his arms and tightens them around Dean’s back, pulling him closer to hug him. “Maybe you’re right.” And as he says it, he believes it.

“No shit.”

Castiel shakes his head. “It’s strange, but... I feel as though I know myself better, after having met you. Does that seem – ”

“Weird? No,” Dean says. He presses a kiss to the freckle right beside Castiel’s nipple, easily within reach. “I get it. I, um. Me too.” 

Castiel smiles. “A fresh pair of eyes can clarify a few things, I guess.”

“Bring us out of our funks. Yeah,” Dean agrees. He taps his fingers against Castiel’s side, but he makes absolutely no move to get up. “I think I’m finally going to call Sam back.”

“I think that’s a good choice.” Castiel follows the remark with a kiss to the crown of Dean’s head.

 Dean clears his throat and shifts a little. They stick together and Dean winces a little. “Hey, um. When you said you would stay.”

“Hm?”

Dean bites his lip. Castiel can’t see Dean do so where he is positioned, but can feel his own lip start to ache, so Castiel still knows that it happened. “Did that offer have an expiration date?”

Castiel breathes out, relieved. “What do you think?” 

Briefly, they pause to consider their contentment together. When no more words have to be said, for the first time since he can remember, Castiel feels himself starting to drift. Sooner than he normally would, he falls asleep.

When he awakes, later, he is still joined to someone else, someone who shares his dreams and his regrets, and only thinks him _better_ because of them, and he can’t possibly feel lonely anymore.

 

 

01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101

 

Outside, it thunders on. Hearty roots run deep underneath rolling rubber. The lattice of a steel fence along the sidewalk cuts the world up like lace. Searchlights scan the cloudy skies, heralding braver, friendly souls down into warmer corners. Mist and fuzziness not unlike the white noise static of a broken television creeps up along the road, spreading to meet dark clouds still fat and drooping with acid rainwater. A man with a lighter and a fortune cookie packet in his hand wades through it, his hood turned up against the chill, but still he stops to look at Dean’s shuttered window while he crosses the street. He brushes his damp curly hair out of his eyes, smiles to himself, and continues on his way.

The traffic light turns red.

A school bus slows to a crawl as the light changes, alongside a white bicycle leaning against a telephone pole. There are roses braided through its spokes, and wilting daisies threaded through its chain. A splintering wooden cross draped with white paper streamers is propped up with painstaking care beside it. The crepe paper decorating this street corner melts and swirls away into the storm drain. The kids on the school bus throw things and shriek laughter into each other’s faces.

The school bus eventually rolls on, down the long, gridded streets and beneath covered roadways. Steel arches in the gut of the city rise like the rafters of a church. Every tunnel is a temple, each cab a confessional, and every pedestrian a patron saint. It stretches on and on into the deep, car radios wailing the keen of oldies station and the shrill blaring of traffic horns harmonizing like hymns. Billboards became the new proverbs. Street signs the new commandments. This is the heart of the most holy of houses, and when a single man spreads his arms out wide, his fingers cannot touch either end of it. He can only hold onto someone else’s hand and reach to bridge his gaps through help and hope. 

Paint flakes. Graffiti on the sides of warehouses and garages can be washed away as easily as cheap nail polish or chalk dust when the rain pours down hard enough. Still, nonsense words and names adorn faded walls. When the rain clears, new ones will spring up in their place, different and yet no less the same. Decoration designed specifically to breathe life and ownership back into a sprawling cityscape that has been built so high it’s gotten away from the people that built it. All sharp angles: the work of even sharper tongues. A shout into the void sounds an awful lot like the spritz of a can of spray paint or the crackle of a radio, if only one listens closely enough.

When Castiel will walk down the streets of his new home, shaped by circumstance, he will smile at the running colors. He will squeeze Dean’s hand where it’s tangled up with his, and send a silent prayer up to the endless sky that someone else feeling the same loneliness he did will reach the same conclusions that he has: that choices made have brought each of them to this point, and nothing exists in a vacuum.

Castiel will further realize, as he sits down for coffee with Dean and his friend Charlie in a crowded deli, that he is not nameless, never anonymous. He is the sum of the people he meets and the reactions that he inspires, ever-evolving, resilient.

But for now he is content to doze, and allow memories to inspire dreams.


End file.
